Can we just stop speculating on whether a MAYDAY was called, or who called for evac. For those who haven't heard the R/T, either at the time or on tape, the transcript will tell you.
Superpilot.....there were a/c holding short of 27L, at S3.
However, we would very rarely hold at N1/N2E/N2W to cross southbound at the threshold when landing 27L. This would mean infringing the ILS critical area, which would fluctuate the GP signal badly. We would only do that when weather conditions were CAVOK and inbound a/c were happy to continue visually. I've seen it done maybe fifteen times in ten years.