Hotel Manager Killed in Fire Failed to Heed Official’s Warning

When a trash can blaze broke out in a downtown San Bernardino residential hotel last month, Robert Downs grabbed a fire extinguisher and rode the elevator to the third floor where he put out the flames.

After the Nov. 8 blaze, a Fire Department captain warned Downs, the hotel manager, to stay out of the elevator if it happened again, Battalion Chief Mike Alder recalled Sunday. Take the stairs, he was told. Too many things can go wrong if you take the elevator.

But when another fire broke out on the third floor of the Sunset Hotel early Saturday, Downs ignored the advice and it cost him his life. He was one of four men killed in the fire.

Investigators Sunday were trying to determine whether the blaze was deliberately set. “There’s been a history of trash can fires there ... so our guys are taking it very seriously,” Alder said.

The battalion chief said trained dogs had failed to find flammable liquid that could have been used to start the fire. He said a fire that started in the waist-high bin may have been fueled by shelves holding magazines and other combustible materials.

All of this took place in front of the elevator, he said. When the doors opened, the hotel manager probably was met with a wall of flames and a temperature of 1,000 to 1,500 degrees.

“When the heat hit him, it would drop him like a rock,” Alder said.

Investigators also want to make sure that the hotel’s fire alarm was working, Alder said.

None of the alarms was pulled Saturday, which Alder called “absolutely unusual.”

During a July 30 inspection, the Fire Department found an insufficient number of smoke detectors and alarms that weren’t working. The violations were corrected within a day, according to the department.

The other victims were identified as Gregory A. Abdun-Nur, 34; Harold M. Turman, 41; and Michael Lloyd Stevens, 50.

Six people remained hospitalized in critical or serious condition.

The fire was limited to the third floor, but the entire hotel sustained smoke and water damage.

Seventy-three people who lived at the Sunset were moved from an emergency shelter at San Bernardino High School to motels by the Red Cross.

Many low-income families and formerly homeless people, some with drug, alcohol or mental health problems, resided at the Sunset.

Alder said the hotel had been “a nightmare for us.”

He said authorities often were called there for medical emergencies and domestic quarrels.

Because of its age, about 40, the building was exempt from the law that requires sprinklers in newer hotels and apartments.

The lack of sprinklers, the building layout and the trash had worried Alder.

“It always has been a fear of mine to go to a fire at that building,” he said.