Drunk American tourists found sleeping atop Eiffel Tower after dodging security

Two drunken tourists from the United States were on Monday (Aug 13) discovered sleeping atop the iconic Eiffel Tower in Paris after evading security the night before, said the monument's operator on Tuesday.

Security guards awakened the men "early morning" at the time they were making their routine rounds before the famous tourist spot's opening time at 9:00 am, news agency AFP cited publicly-owned Eiffel Tower operator Sete as saying.

They "appear to have got stuck because of how drunk they were," as per a Paris prosecutor.

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The drunk American men had spent their outlawed night under the stars in an area which is generally not open to the public between the tower's second and third levels, but "did not pose any apparent threat," Sete further said.

As per a police source, the tourists jumped security barriers while climbing down the stairs from the tower's top after paying for the entry ticket around 10:40 pm on Sunday.

Firefighters, including a specialist unit for recovering people from dangerous heights, were sent to recover the intruders, the police source further added.

Both men were brought to the police station in Paris' seventh district for interrogation, while Sete said that they would file a criminal complaint against the interlopers.

The incident delayed the famous site's opening to the public for around an hour on Monday morning.

Bomb threats force evacuation

On Saturday (August 12), the Eiffel Tower was evacuated and closed to the public as a precautionary measure following a bomb threat for nearly two hours.

According to a report by Le Parisien, a French daily newspaper, a large security perimeter had been established, traffic diverted and the monument was also evacuated.

However, two hours or so later, a French police source released a statement saying that “It was a false alarm, people can go back inside”.

Some of the tourists, who came in droves during the peak summer season at the iconic Paris monument, said they were irked by the two-hour closure. This was after they waited in a nearly 100-metre queue at one of the entrances before the threat was called off.

The last bomb threat called in at the Eiffel Tower was in September 2020 and was an anonymous call made to the police that prompted an evacuation of the tower, which also lasted about two hours.

On Monday, an email with a bomb threat against the 330-metre (1080 feet) steel tower was sent to three Paris police stations but police advised against evacuating it.

(With inputs from agencies)

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