"Evacuate the train" message played by mistake on a TGV

[in_luzern]

I was on the upper deck of a TGV from Luxembourg to Mulhouse this afternoon. The train stopped at Thionville and, after the usual "stand clear of the closing doors" message, there was an automated "Evacuate the train, leave the train as quickly as possible, do not take your luggage with you" announcement, which was played repeatedly in several languages. People started to move towards the stairs (most of them grabbing their suitcases on the way which created a bit of a queue), but the doors were already closed and the train had started moving. After a couple of minutes, a member of the train crew came on the speaker to tell us to please ignore the automated messages.

Would this be a case of someone literally pressing the wrong button? And would that be someone on the train, or in a control centre somewhere? I'm just curious, I use TGV, ICE, etc. quite a lot and have not come across this before.

 

[172007]

I can't answer as to what happened here but I do know that a class 172 the pis has about 8 two digit codes you can enter to send a voice and text message in the train to evacuate front, rear, leave train etc.

 

[guilbert]

I'm wondering what circumstances this would actually be needed - I would assume that in any incident requiring a full evacuation people would self evacuate anyway and for anything else having a duplex tgv set worth of passengers milling around is going to be quite hard to manage. It could be intended for when the train is already in a platform (maybe a bomb threat?) but it's a but unrealistic to expect everyone to leave their luggage behind.

 

[in_luzern]

Bomb threat and fire were the first things that came to my mind.

It could be intended for when the train is already in a platform (maybe a bomb threat?)