United Nations Evacuated After Fire Alarm, All Clear Given: Witnesses

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — The United Nations building in Midtown Manhattan was briefly evacuated Tuesday morning after a fire alarm went off, according to several people posting to social media from the scene.

A crowd of people were seen waiting outside the international organization's headquarters — on First Avenue near East 42nd Street — in the wake of the evacuation.

"The whole [UN] is now being evacuated. No one seems to know why. Thousands of delegates standing outside," one Twitter user, a Swedish youth delegate to the UN, posted.

An FDNY spokeswoman told Patch that the department did not respond to the scene during the evacuation.

A reporter from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation who was evacuated told Patch that people were given the all clear to return to the building around 11:25 a.m. During the evacuation, the Security Council was among the group of people escorted from the building, according to the reporter.

A fire alarm that went off in the UN basement's fan room caused the evacuation, Reuters bureau chief Michelle Nichols reported. A UN spokesperson told Nichols that there was no fire detected.

One person posted a video of a large United Nations chamber evacuating in the middle of a meeting.

The United Nations is currently hosting the High-Level Political Forum on sustainable development in 2017. The theme of this year's conference is “Eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity in a changing world," according to the UN website.

Photos by Melissa Kent via Twitter