(Trinidad Express) Almost 300 guests, including a number of Trinidadians, had to be evacuated from a hotel in Guyana on Saturday night after fire tore through one of the floors of the six-storey building which was booked to capacity with fans who came for the Republic Bank Caribbean Premier League (CPL) cricket final last night.
Two hundred and ninety-three adults and four children who were staying at the Ramada Princess Hotel and Casino in Providence, East Bank Demerara, escaped unharmed.
Guyana fire officials said yesterday the fire started at 10.45 p.m. in a room on the fourth floor.
Hotel staff members alerted guests and then proceeded to assist in getting them out of the building.
Several fire tenders responded to the blaze but damage to area where the fire began was said to be “extensive”. Water also swamped the lobby of the hotel, Stabroek News reported, adding bedsheets were also tied together to help occupants escape the area.
More than a dozen Trinidadians were able to escape the fire without injury.
Fire personnel said the blaze started in room 431.
Trinidadian Imran Khan, who was in a room at the hotel with his brother when the fire broke out, shared a video online as he recalled his ordeal.
“So when we open the door, we couldn’t go anywhere. The only way out was through the glass. I picked up a chair and I tried to break the glass but the chair was bouncing off (the window),” he said. “The only thing I saw (in my mind) after that was my wife and two kids…So what I did was, I ran off and grabbed a (lamp) and I just broke through the glass. After I broke the glass I started climbing down from floor to floor, dragging him (his brother) with me.”
“When we touch ground the hotel crew came and hugged us and said ‘fat man, you did well’,” he said.
Khan secured his hotel stay and CPL ticket after winning a competition hosted by One Caribbean Media (OCM) radio station Taj 92.3FM.
CCN TV6’s general manager Richard Purcell, who was also staying at the hotel but was outside the 194-room hotel at the time fire broke out, told the Express by phone yesterday that it began in room 431 which was opposite his room, 428.
TV6 and the Express are part of the OCM Group. Purcell said he knew of ten Trinidad and Tobago nationals who were guests at the hotel, including six who had won a trip to Guyana and CPL tickets as part of a promotion by TV6 and Taj radio.
He said all ten were okay.
He said he and three others had to spend Saturday night into yesterday morning at a radio commentary media centre at the Guyana National Stadium.
“Most of the CPL officials and crew stayed at the hotel so it was booked completely,” Purcell said.
He said there was a concert on Saturday in the car park of the stadium featuring Machel Montano, Kees, Shenseea, Sean Paul and Shaggy.
The concert was in full swing by approximately 10 p.m.
“Around 10.45 p.m. we started receiving calls stating that our hotel was on fire,” he said. “When we went across it had already been contained but everybody was out on the lawn as the entrance had been blocked off.”
Purcell said: “We also heard that people on the sixth floor could not get out and the fire brigade had to put up their ladder to get people out. We were on the lawn for a while and the building has been completely water soaked.”
He said fire officers eventually let them into the hotel to retrieve their belongings.
“My door had been smashed in and all of my stuff was there. I just took everything and left,” he said.
Purcell said there were no hotel rooms available in Georgetown and “we had to get some officials to open a media centre for us at the Guyana National Stadium and we got there around 4.30 a.m.”
He said that by daylight yesterday morning they were staying temporarily with friends.
The Guyana Fire Service earlier reported that 28 firefighters along with fire tenders from two fire stations, three ambulances and a hydraulic system (which was used to rescue several people who were trapped on the sixth floor of the hotel) were dispatched to the scene.
“One guest was conveyed to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation by Emergency Medical Technicians for treatment of smoke inhalation,” the Guyana Fire Service said in a statement, adding that “there were no serious injuries or casualties”.
GFS said the “room of origin, along with rooms 433 and 435 sustained significant damage”.
The fire had been contained within an hour of their arrival.