Downtown Rush-Hour Traffic Snarled : Elderly Flee Retirement Hotel Struck by Fire

A fire on the top floor of a downtown retirement hotel late Friday afternoon forced elderly residents to flee their rooms and sent billows of black smoke across the city.

There are about 210 residents in the 285-room, six-story Maryland Hotel, at 6th Avenue and F Street, according to a hotel employee.

“When I opened the door into the hall, the smoke was so thick that I couldn’t see the other wall,” said Ruth Scholtens, a longtime sixth-floor resident at the Maryland. “I knew not to use the elevator, and I made my way down the stairs. It was awfully scary and dark but here I am.”

Firefighters were called to the hotel shortly before 5 p.m. and immediately began evacuation. The blaze gutted the northwest wing of the top floor, where it had started, and spread to the roof.

Fire Capt. Richard McDowell said there were no serious injuries, but nine residents were taken to UC San Diego Medical Center and Mercy Hospital for problems including smoke inhalation and chest pains.

Smoke and fire damage was confined to the sixth floor of the hotel, McDowell said. The blaze was extinguished shortly before 6:30 p.m. The origin and cause of the fire had not been determined, he said.

Streets Closed to Traffic

The blaze broke out during rush hour, attracting a large crowd of spectators and snarling home-bound traffic as police closed several streets surrounding the aging brick building.

Most of the tenants living on lower floors were told they could return to their rooms after mop-up operations were finished later Friday night, but a Salvation Army spokesman said the agency would provide rooms for any of the elderly tenants who needed them.

Two elderly men were removed from a top-floor fire escape using a snorkel truck’s rescue platform. But most of the residents, many of them walking with canes or other aids, were able to reach the safety of the lobby on their own or with help of their neighbors and firefighters.

Sitting on the curb across the street from the burning hotel was 88-year-old Joe Refke.

‘Look at That Smoke’

“I was on the Chicago Police Department for 27 years and never saw a fire. This is the first fire I’ve ever been at,” Refke said. “Look at that smoke!”

Refke said he rode the elevator up to his sixth-floor room, unaware of the fire.

“A fellow got off at the fifth floor and everything looked OK,” he said. “Then when the elevator doors opened up on the sixth floor, the hall was thick with smoke. I hollered out, ‘Go down! Go down!’ a few times, and then I got out of there.”

Many of the residents sat transfixed by the sight of the smoke and flames pouring from the top-floor windows and roof of the hotel, outwardly calm but fearful that they would not be able to return to retrieve their belongings.

Vera Youine recounted how she made her way down the stairway from her third-floor apartment without help, but confessed, “I couldn’t have made it much farther.”

“It’s strange how you think you know exactly what to do in case of a fire, and then it happens and you forget everything,” Youine said. “I’m worried that I don’t have my medicine,” she said, fumbling in her purse in search of it.

Then she laughed out loud, startling the concerned group of refugees around her, and confided to one woman the cause of her mirth.

“Look what I saved,” she said. “Of all things, the first thing I grabbed was my bra.”