16 Die in Cairo Luxury Hotel Fire : Egypt: American among victims of wind-swept blaze started by sparks from oven in adjoining tent restaurant.

Fire whipped by strong winds roared through a luxury hotel early today, killing 16 people and injuring 70, including many who suffered broken bones in jumping out windows or sliding down bedsheets to escape.

The dead include at least one American, said U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Marcelle Wahba. She refused to release details about the victim. Three Americans were seriously injured, police Brig. Abdel-Rehim el-Kenawy said.

The fire burned for nine hours at the six-story Heliopolis Sheraton northeast of Cairo, which had neither fire alarms nor sprinkler systems. Tourism Minister Fuad Sultan said the blaze started accidentally in the Nubian Tent restaurant, which was attached to one of the three wings of the T-shaped hotel.

Sparks jumped from a clay oven to the ceiling of the tent, igniting flames that quickly spread to the adjacent building, Sultan said.

Winds of nearly 25 m.p.h. fed the flames, which destroyed much of the 630-room hotel, including its restaurants and elaborate lobby, where live birds flew among tropical plants and trees.

When the fire broke out, there were about 1,000 guests and 300 employees inside the hotel, which is near the international airport. It was not known how many people were inside the Nubian Tent, where belly dancing and other entertainment is featured.

“We were asleep when my wife got up and noticed some orange flames outside the window,” said Fred Pirkey, a 57-year-old Atlanta real estate broker. From their sixth-floor room, “we made it through the smoke to the third floor,” where a man was tying bedsheets together to attach to the windowsill.

“With his help, we got around 20 people down to the roof of the ground floor below, from where we jumped to safety,” he said. “We are very fortunate to be alive.”

One of those who went down via the sheet was a 72-year-old man from Battle Creek, Mich., Robert Louis Toohey, who said he crawled through the smoke from his sixth-floor room to the third floor.

As he went down the sheet, Toohey said, he passed out, but a man on the ground caught him. Toohey was hospitalized for smoke inhalation.

“It was worse than the landing in Normandy during the Second World War,” said Toohey. “There, we were attacked and could fight back. In this fire, there was nothing to fight back with.”

The 10-year-old Heliopolis Sheraton is the only one of Egypt’s six Sheratons without an alarm system or sprinklers, Sultan said. They are not mandatory under Egyptian law but most first-class hotels began installing them in 1987.