Hotel Toll Hits 95; Arson Inquiry Pushed

Investigators searching for evidence of arson concentrated Friday on a blackened corner of the Dupont Plaza Hotel where the ballroom was located. Police said search teams had found 95 victims of the New Year’s Eve fire.

A few miles away, doctors and forensic experts tried to identify the charred remains of victims, most of whom were so badly burned that relatives could not recognize them. Forty-one people remained hospitalized.

Police Supt. Carlos Lopez Feliciano told reporters outside the darkened hotel Friday night, as searchers quit for the day, that 95 bodies had been found.

Search to Continue

“They consider that 95 is a complete count, but tomorrow they are going to search again just in case. At this moment, 95 is the final total, I hope,” he said.

Meanwhile, the head of a union representing casino workers charged that the death toll in the fire was so high partly because hotel security agents locked the access door to the casino, located directly above the ballroom, and another door leading to a conference room.

Victor Villalba, president of the casino employees’ union at the hotel, said at a news conference Friday that many people died pushing up against a locked door leading to the pool area on the west side of the hotel. He called for an investigation by federal and Puerto Rican authorities.

“If those doors had been open or if the hotel security services would not have controlled access to casino entrance ways in the way they did, the number of victims would not have been so high,” said Villalba, president of the Assn. of Casino Employees.

Other hotel employees said earlier in the week that it is common for doors to be barred during emergencies to prevent robberies of the casino cashier.

Investigators focused their attention on a ground-floor corner of the building where the ballroom was located. Witnesses at the nearby swimming pool reported hearing explosions and said the ballroom and the casino directly above it virtually exploded in flames Wednesday afternoon.

Searchers have hunted for bodies through the tangle of burnt furniture, twisted cables and collapsed ceilings for two days. Undersecretary of Health Emilio Davila said that bodies were found from the mezzanine-level casino up to the fourth floor.

The corpse of a woman was discovered sitting in a window frame through which her husband had jumped and suffered only a broken ankle. Davila said the woman apparently had hesitated.

Hotel Manager Among Dead

Brooke Thompson, the hotel’s general manager, reportedly was among the dead.

“We’re here to find out where it started and why it started,” said Andrew Vita of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The bureau, the FBI and Puerto Rican police are investigating the fire.

A team of three forensic pathologists from the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology also is helping authorities investigate the fire.

Vita refused to say what evidence police and his agency’s 22-member team have turned up.

Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon and other top officials have said there are indications that the fire may have been set by an arsonist. There was a bitter labor dispute at the hotel, Wednesday’s blaze was accompanied by explosions and there were at least two small fires at the hotel in the previous days.

“The labor controversy in the hotel was very, very tense,” Hernandez Colon said in a broadcast interview. “All sorts of information was going around that there was going to be a problem at the hotel, that there were going to be bombs, that there were going to be fires. People were warned to stay away.”

The investigation is being directed by Puerto Rico’s justice secretary, Hector Rivera Cruz, who summoned the federal agencies. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has jurisdiction in cases involving explosives and interstate commerce, Vita said.

Besides physical evidence, bureau agents are interviewing guests and others, Vita said.

When asked about reports that remnants of three incendiary devices were found in the beachfront hotel, Rivera Cruz was quoted Friday as saying: “I’m not denying that.”

Link to Labor Denied

The Teamsters Union, which represents most of the hotel’s 250 unionized employees, has angrily rejected suggestions that the fire was linked to the labor dispute. The blaze broke out minutes after union members meeting in a hotel conference room rejected a contract offer.

Meanwhile, red-eyed tourists who had seen their New Year’s Caribbean vacations turn into a nightmare gathered at the State Medical Center to await word that the remains of loved ones had been identified. Several dozen people were still reported as missing.

Other survivors attended a memorial Mass at the governor’s mansion, La Fortaleza, or waited outside the Dupont Plaza for belongings that officials said would be returned after recovery.