Billowing smoke forced the evacuation of 157 guests at Cape Town’s St George’s hotel on Tuesday morning.
About a third of them had to be treated for smoke inhalation, said the Cape Town fire and emergency services divisional officer in charge of operations, Sabastian Martin.
Firefighters in two hydraulic platform fire engines arrived at the scene at 6.02am to find insulation was on fire on the electrical wiring running up a conduit all the way from the basement to the top of the 32-storey building, he said.
It is suspected the fire was started by an electrical short where the main power supply from the council linked to the complex’s transformer-driven private electricity supply. The transformer itself did not catch fire.
Smoke travelled throughout the entire building, making its way into guests’ rooms via the cupboards, said Martin.
Most people were evacuated from the hotel accommodation on the sixth to the 13th floors of the hotel — formerly the Heerengracht hotel.
Some managed to reach the emergency stairwells on their own and were guided to the ground floor by firefighters.
Others made their way up the building to the 26th floor, where they broke into an office as they could not access the roof.
Martin said 15 people were eventually rescued from the office and brought safely to the ground by rescue workers doing a systematic, room-to-room search using thermal-mapping cameras.
They were also brought down using the stairwells, as the emergency generator did not kick in and there was no power for the fireman’s lift.
The hotel management has since done a roll call and, according to its guest list, everyone is accounted for.
He said two ambulances were on standby outside the hotel to provide oxygen therapy to those suffering from smoke inhalation.
About a third of the guests were treated.
”Nobody was taken to hospital, because nobody was injured.”
The hotel management has brought in private electrical contractors to do repairs, said Martin.
The hotel will be back in use by the end of the day, at the earliest. Guests have been moved to a sister hotel in Sea Point. — Sapa