Hotel fires shine a light on disruption and displacement

Two hotel fires in London this summer and further fire this September in Kent displaced hundreds of guests, disrupted surrounding streets and drew significant emergency resources. While the fires in Fulham, Hackney and Kent resulted in no fatalities, they raised an important question about what a hotel fire actually costs, even when the outcome is the best it can be.

In late June, around 70 firefighters and ten fire engines were called to a blaze at a Travelodge on Amhurst Road near Hackney Central station. The blaze broke out across two rooms on the fifth and sixth floors, forcing the evacuation of 16 guests. Those displaced were taken to a rest centre and left in the care of the local authority. Residents nearby were urged to keep their windows and doors shut as dense black smoke billowed from the building, and traffic on Amhurst Road and surrounding streets was disrupted while fire crews brought the fire under control. According to the London Fire Brigade, the fire is believed to have been caused by the unsafe use of incense sticks.

Six weeks later, four fire engines and around 25 firefighters were called to a fire in a plant room on the first floor of the 12-storey Ibis Hotel on Lillie Road in Fulham. This was a building with its own fire history, having previously had a room destroyed and three floors engulfed in smoke in an incident at the same site in 2013. On this occasion, around 450 people were evacuated. A man, a woman and a child were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation. Fire and rescue crews from Fulham, Chelsea, Kensington and surrounding stations attended, and the fire was brought under control just over two hours after the first call.

This month we have witnessed a substantial fire at the Grand Burstin Hotel in Folkestone. The fire drew 26 fire appliances and 280 people were evacuated in response to a basement car park fire that spread into the lower floor. Subsequently the surrounding area has been evacuated as questions were raised over the remaining structure.

Across these incidents, hundreds of people were displaced, some requiring medical treatment, with streets closed and emergency services stretched. In these cases, the outcome was, in the starkest terms, a good one as no lives were lost.

But the impact and disruption is real. The costs are significant, even when they go uncounted. Guests with no room, no belongings and no onward plan experience something that rarely features in any post-incident analysis. There is the burden on local authorities managing displaced guests, local residents and the knock-on effects on surrounding traffic and businesses, and the firefighter hours committed.

Statistics show that there are more than 400 hotel fires per year across Great Britain, more than one every single day across a national stock of around 9,500 hotels.¹ The overwhelming majority result in no fatalities. They are, in that sense, largely unreported and invisible. But they are not cost-free.

A common feature to each of these hotels is that none of them featured sprinklers. What sprinklers can do is contain a fire to a limited area, reducing the speed at which it spreads, limiting the scale of evacuation required and reducing the resources needed to bring it under control. A fire held to the room of origin or a basement car park is a very different incident from one spreading across floors. The difference for guests, for staff, for the fire service and for the surrounding community is measurable long before the question of the benefit to safety and limiting casualties arises.

For more information about the Business Sprinkler Alliance visit www.business-sprinkler-alliance.org