Paterson, NJ’s Fatal Hotel Fire
FEATURES
FIRE REPORT
Photo by Bob Pressler
It was a few minutes past midnight in Paterson, NJ’s central fire alarm office where a camera crew had just set up to videotape the dispatch operations as part of a video presentation for the Firemen’s Ball. Little did they know that in a few minutes they would have on film the sequence of calls reporting the worst hotel disaster in New Jersey’s history. A disaster where 14 people lost their lives, over 60 hotel occupants were injured, and 12 firefighters were transported to local hospitals. The fire trapped over 100 victims, who had to be rescued and/or removed via ladders to safety.
There are hundreds of old hotels scattered throughout the country, many with building flaws that are a result of architectural design and years of neglect and abuse. The construction of these buildings makes them particularly subject to all types of fires, both accidental and criminal. The Alexander Hamilton Hotel fire, October 18, 1984, in Paterson, NJ, was a classic example of a malicious act stemming from a conflict between landlord and tenant.
Russell W. Conklin, a 44-year-old part-time handyman and hotel resident, argued with the night manager after appearing in the lobby half naked and intoxicated. Brought to his third-floor room, he piled his sheets and blankets against the door and set them on fire. Then he climbed out the window and onto a roof about two feet below the window sill.
The desk clerk, Alex Iaconia, smelled smoke shortly after midnight and found smoke and flames issuing from Conklin’s room (number 123). He tried to use a fire extinguisher, but the flames blew into the public corridor as the door failed. Later, Conklin was quoted as saying, “I couldn’t open the door so I burned it.”
Conklin was arrested in the hotel parking lot after employees told fire officials of the argument with the hotel staff member. Conklin was arraigned the same night before Judge Ronald Fava of the municipal court and is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail in the Passaic County Jail. He was charged with homicide and aggravated arson.
BUILDING CONSTRUCTION
The Alexander Hamilton Hotel was of brick and reinforced concrete construction, 110 feet high, eight stories in the front, nine stories in the rear, with a basement and subbasement. The floors were made of reinforced concrete and the ceilings were wire lath and cement plaster. The corridor walls were made of 4-inch gypsum block with 2-inch cement plaster. The first and second floors were unoccupied, but at one time had housed a ballroom, restaurant, and mezzanine. The hotel residents occupied the third through the eighth floors.
The third floor was the only floor that had wood panelling (3/16-inch thick) in its corridors and a 10-inch drop ceiling supported by wood furring strips.
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The doors to all the rooms were solid wood panel type and the glass in the wood-framed transoms had been replaced with 1/2-inch wood panels. The building had three elevators and three enclosed metal stairways with reinforced concrete walls and self-closing metal clad doors. Each stairway had a standpipe connection with hose on every floor. In two stairways, however, the hose was burned off on the third-floor level.
FIRE DEPARTMENT RESPONSE
A telephone call was received at the dispatch center at 12:13 a.m. reporting a fire at the Alexander Hamilton Hotel three blocks away. Seconds later, another call was received from a telephone fire alarm box on the street in front of the hotel. The caller was LeRoy Perry, a fire department dispatcher, who was off duty at the time and who lived at the hotel. In fact, he lived on the fire floor and had just escaped down the stairway. Within a minute, numerous other calls were received at the dispatch center via telephone.
Battalion Chief A1 Rosiello, who had been in the fire alarm office making his nightly inspection, responded and arrived on the scene at 12:16 a.m. Battalion Chief John Gregg, the assigned chief, arrived at the same time. A mattress fire was reported at 12:17 a.m., followed by reports of a working fire.
Encountering heavy fire and heat conditions on the third floor stairway and corridor, Chief Gregg ordered a second alarm at 12:18 a.m. A third alarm was transmitted at 12:20 a.m. when heavy smoke conditions were reported on all upper floors with fire extending vertically and horizontally, trapping occupants on the five floors above the fire.
At 12:21 a.m.. Truck 3, a 100-foot aerial, was special called and set up at the rear of the hotel. Mutual aid was requested at 12:30 a.m. Passaic and Hawthorne responded with 100-foot and 85-foot aerial trucks; Clifton, West Paterson, and Prospect Park responded with pumpers and elevating platforms.
First arriving engine companies used an in-line pumping operation, connecting large diameter hose to nearby hydrants. This was done to insure adequate water pressures and to allow the incoming units arriving on subsequent alarms to keep hose stretches as short as possible and advance their lines more quickly.
Three 1 3/4-inch lines were immediately advanced up the interior stairway to the third floor to operate on the main fire. Two 1 3/4-inch lines were advanced to the fourth floor to check for and to control extension of fire; these lines also secured the stairway for escaping civilians. Four 2 1/2-inch lines supplied the two standpipe Siamese connections on the building’s facade.
Exterior streams were used judiciously to protect occupants on ladders above the fire and to minimize driving the heat and toxic gases at the firefighters who were advancing interior handlines down the third-floor corridor. Exterior streams also protected the upper floors that were threatened by auto exposure.
As the acting chief of department, I responded on the second alarm and assumed command. We initiated a defensive-offensive strategy that called for holding the fire to the third floor and performing search and rescue operations.
RESCUE OPERATIONS
About 175 people were trapped above the fire. They were screaming at almost every window, waving sheets, towels, blankets, and whatever they could find to attract attention. We played all spotlights and search lights on the windows to let them know that we knew they were there. This helped to calm and reassure them and they waited with great patience and courage.
Two 100-foot aerial ladders positioned in front of the fire building removed many occupants from the fourth through the eighth floor windows. One 100-foot aerial, an 85-foot and a 65-foot elevating platform did the same on the exposure four side of the hotel.
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Photo by Bill Clare
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In the rear, exposure three, some of the most daring rescues were made by a 100-foot and an 85-foot aerial manned by two engine company crews. The 100-foot ladder could not reach the two top floors due to the adjacent, smaller buildings set closer to the street. A 50-foot Bangor portable ladder was carried to the rear and raised from the roof of a three-story extension. A 12-foot roof ladder was then placed on top of the 50-foot ladder in order to remove a victim from the eighth floor.
Inside the hotel, rescue teams equipped with self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) worked their way up the enclosed stairways above the fire and searched all floors. They rescued many victims who were trapped in corridors and stairways. Search and rescue operations took over two hours to complete.
INVESTIGATION AND CONCLUSIONS
Due to the hotel’s brick and reinforced concrete construction, the walls, ceilings, and floors held up under the severe heat and fire conditions. The contents of the third floor were incinerated, and the wood interior finishes of this floor’s corridors made it the most susceptible to flashover and flame spread than any of the other floors in the hotel.
The fire burned through many of the third-floor’s doors, enabling the fire to spread into rooms, thereby introducing an enormous fire load which, in turn, produced a very hot fire. It was extremely difficult for firefighters to advance their hose lines due to the radiative feedback in the vault-like construction of the concrete corridors.
The fire was held to the third floor by the outstanding performance of the firefighters bearing the brunt of the interior attack. Heavy smoke and super-heated toxic gases filled the five floors above the fire.
An investigation, which started immediately after the fire was under control and continued for four days, led to the discovery of several major factors that caused the smoke to travel upward with great rapidity:
- Two doors on the fire floor leading to two stairways were in the open position. One was held open by a large steel trash can. The other
- door was a rolling fire door that had malfunctioned.
- A series of air shafts were connected to a ventilator in each bathroom. These shafts led to a common plenum about 18 inches deep between the eighth floor and the roof. The hot toxic gases spread up the air shafts where they were pressurized and then banked down into the bathroom ventilators in the upper floors. Most of the dead were found on the upper floors (two on the eighth, six on the seventh, one on the sixth, three on the fifth, one on the third). In all, 14 victims died in the fire.
- Due to the distance from the fire floor to the locations where the bodies were found, it is suspected that a deadly poisonous gas was produced by the products of combustion. Toxicology tests are presently being conducted.
The number of burned, injured, and rescued victims overwhelmed the Paterson Fire Department’s six ambulance crews, prompting a request for the Passaic County Sheriff’s emergency response team for assistance. They supplied three ambulances and 50 men. Ambulance squads from eight neighboring cities also responded along with two paramedic units from local hospitals.
St. Joseph’s Hospital put its emergency disaster plan into effect for the first time. Over 60 people were treated and 20 admitted at this hospital alone. Victims were also taken to two other nearby hospitals. The dead were taken by the sheriff’s team and placed in a temporary morgue at the Passaic County Jail nearby.
