4 Killed, 18 Injured in Residential Hotel Fire

An early morning fire in a downtown San Bernardino residential hotel Saturday killed four men, including the building manager, who armed himself with a fire extinguisher and rode the elevator up into the center of the third-floor inferno.

Firefighters responding to a 12:55 a.m. call from the Sunset Hotel said they witnessed their “worst nightmare” as about 20 people, one dangling a baby, screamed for help from third-story windows on all sides of the U-shaped building. A few looked as if they were preparing to jump.

“You pull up and you are looking at 20 to 25 people who are going to die if you don’t do something very quickly,” said Battalion Chief Mike Alder, among the first to arrive. Residents, he said, “had absolute terror in their eyes, absolute terror.”

It took firefighters about 15 minutes to pull people to safety and extinguish the blaze, which started in a 32-gallon plastic trash can next to the third-floor elevator. But in the meantime, temperatures in the hallway and in some rooms rose to an estimated 1,000 to 1,800 degrees, melting smoke detectors and other fixtures, fire officials said.

“We know the fire started in the trash can, but how is something we are still investigating,” Alder said. “There are two possibilities, like a cigarette, or it was intentionally set.”

Eighteen tenants were injured, four critically, all suffering from smoke inhalation.

The building had a recent history of fire code violations, but all had been corrected by November, city officials said. Since August, two fires had broken out in third-floor trash cans near the elevator. They were quickly extinguished, but the cause could not be determined.

The body of the building manager, identified by family members and friends as Bob Downs, 49, was found lying on the third floor, straddling the threshold of the open elevator door with a fire extinguisher by his side.

“He probably took one breath and it was over,” Alder said.

Eighty firefighters responded to the stucco building in the city’s downtown core, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.

City officials described the hotel, where rents range from $425 to $500 a month, as a “place of last resort” for formerly homeless and low-income families and some with drug, alcohol or mental health problems.

Residents on the first and second floors of the 111-unit building were able to escape down the stairs. But most on the third floor faced the real horrors of the blaze, unable to flee through the fiery hallway.

Many said their screeching smoke detectors first alerted them to danger. Creston Lewis, 26, his girlfriend and a neighbor were quickly trapped inside their rooms by smoke and fire.

“My girlfriend opened the door and, before I could close it, our neighbor came plowing in, covered in soot,” Lewis said. Within minutes, the smoke was so intense that he was crouching on the floor, trying to breathe.

“I decided I’m either going to die here or try and get to the window,” he said, choosing to make a run for it in the pitch-black room. “My neighbor was hanging out of it. I grabbed her to keep her from falling -- screaming and hollering for help. I was about ready to pass out from fatigue.”

His rescue was shaky. Firefighters wanted Lewis to exit feet first, but it was hard for the exhausted, gagging man to get a grip on the window. “I managed to get my feet out and took it step by step going down” the ladder, he said. “There was commotion on the ground. Nobody knew who got out and who didn’t.”

The three tenants who died had all tried to escape through the hallway, fire officials believe. One man was found lying in the corridor. The other two had apparently opened their doors, allowing a deadly gust of heat and smoke to blast inside, fire officials said. “If they didn’t go into the hallway, they had time,” said Battalion Chief Allen Simpson.

Victoria Dodd, 15, the mother of a 7-month-old baby, said the heat was so intense inside their small third-floor unit that she and family members, including three other children, splashed water on their faces to breathe as they waved desperately for help from the window. “I was crying for my grandmother in another third-floor room. She’s in a wheelchair ... she made it out,” Dodd said. “I have no food, no formula, no clothes,” she said, adding that she could still “smell the fire all over” her body.

Dodd escaped in jeans and a T-shirt. Others were rescued from their windows in nightclothes and were later given sweatsuits and shoes by the Red Cross, which opened an emergency shelter at San Bernardino High School. About 100 people were left homeless, and were being temporarily housed, either in the shelter or in local motels.

The building, which is about 40 years old, did not have sprinklers, being exempt because of its age from a law that requires sprinklers in new apartments and hotels, city officials said. The fire was contained to the third floor of the building, causing about $100,000 damage.

Downs, the building manager, had celebrated his 49th birthday Friday.

Harvey Cohen, who attended San Bernardino High with Downs, said his friend had struggled with “terrible life problems, some medical, some substance abuse.” He described Downs as a “matter-of-fact guy, a burly guy with a tough hide.... Knowing Bob, he would have not left that building until everyone was out.”

The San Bernardino County coroner has identified all but one of the victims, but because their families had not yet been notified their names were not released Saturday.

Two of the 18 injured were in critical condition at Loma Linda University Medical Center, where they were being treated for smoke inhalation. One is a 73-year-old man and the other is a 44-year-old man. Two more people were taken to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, where they remained in critical condition on ventilators. The rest were still being treated for minor injuries or had been released. Other victims were taken to St. Bernadine Medical Center in San Bernardino or Community Hospital of San Bernardino. Five of the victims with minor injuries were children.

The Fire Department last inspected the building and all its rooms on July 30, said San Bernardino City Fire Marshal Doug Dupree. The department found that some fire alarms were not working, and not enough smoke detectors had been installed.

The owner, Siegfried D. Faucette, corrected the violations within 24 hours, Dupree said.

Faucette also was ordered to install no-smoking signs inside the building, which some people ignored, several residents said Saturday. They said they often found cigarette butts ground into the carpet. Faucette could not be reached for comment Saturday.

City Atty. James F. Penman said he spoke with Faucette at the site, and described him as grief-stricken over the deaths, especially that of the manager. Penman said officials believe smoke detectors and the fire alarm system were in working order.

Last month, Faucette had complied with a Fire Department order to install heavy, solid-wood doors designed to be more fire-safe than the building’s previous plywood doors. Officials credit those doors with saving lives. “They were installed just in the nick of time, “ Penman said.

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Times staff writer Erika Hayasaki contributed to this report.