The scene kinda stands well enough on its own
Around nine o'clock Saturday night, two of my four roommates and I were hanging out in the Embassy Suites hotel room, tired and hungry after a long day of Anime Convention. We get the call from Giordano's that our food has arrived, so they leave to get it and I wait so as not to crowd the elevators any more than they already are. As they're out, the lights flicker once, but I figure it's just one of those things that happen. They get back, we each have a cheesestick, and we each pull out a slice of pizza. Maybe one or two of us got a first bite in before we got a call from roommate M, who was out at the Para Para panel. He's calling to see if we're okay, seeing as our hotel is on fire.
No, he's not joking. Our hotel is on fire. What, you're still in the room?
We rush to the doors, roommate G remembers to check the doors for heat before opening them, and we're greeted by smoke. Now, the Embassy Suites does not have a standard hotel set-up. Each floor is more like a balcony, or a mezzanine, that looks out onto the breakfast/dining area below on the second floor. When you exit a room, you're looking out into that six story drop, which is where the smoke appeared to be coming from.
As if the lack of alarms in the room weren't insult enough, the alarms out in the main area are quiet and hard to understand. I hear a male voice droning the same commands over and over, but can never quite make them out. The other two are in a near-panic, so I can't ask them to wait and hear it out, but I worry because I was taught multi-story building fire safety in my dorms. Namely, if there's a fire, you don't always want to go down, because you may heading right towards it. Seeing as we were on the second-to-highest floor, I thought that was a high possibility.
There aren't any signs for the stairs. There are glowy red EXIT signs pointing to them, but no indication that EXIT means STAIRS OVER HERE BY THE WAY. I had tried to notice the sign/map for them at the elevators, but the only thing I found was a tiny little plaque that you had to lean in to read that said "In case of emergency, use stairs." Thanks, fat lot of good that does me, considering you won't tell me where the hell they are.
I had, however, also determined to find them when the elevator lines were too long after breakfast -- one elevator was broken the whole weekend, and a second went down by Sunday. They were, I think in every corner of the building, but I only found the two on the far end, which just happened to be closer to our room anyway. The other two must have found them at some earlier point too, considering they both run ahead of me.
The stairs are metal and clang with every step and are eerily empty for a building being evacuated. One of the doors -- on floor 2 -- is wide open and smoke gushes in from it, but one more floor and we're outside. The fire can't have been going for more than five minutes and already firetrucks are there, police and firefighters hurrying people out the doors and across the street.
And then, silence. For about an hour, we are told nothing. People's reactions range from amusement -- somehow I doubt their roommates or belongings were in the building -- to lighting up to having a panic attack. Police direct cars and pedestrians away from the buildings, some assholes honk their horns because Chicago drivers are morons who can't see smoke, and the hotel occupants wonder if they'll be able to sleep in their rooms tonight.
We're finally let back into the hotel, informed of absolutely nothing, and find our room is just fine. The pizza is cold, but no other damage aside from the mental aspects. The rumors of the cause of the fire range from "Some dude said he lit his mattress on fire" to "I heard a bunch of guys yelling about smoking pot." The most reliable we hear on Saturday is that it was caused by a diesel generator from another convention that overloaded or something. Roommate A since read on the ACen forums that a broken generator kicked on because of a power surge -- the flickering lights I witnessed -- and started emitting smoke but no fire. Which would actually make it the hotel's fault, because why was their generator hooked up if it was broken?
It's only after we get back into the room that we find the fire safety information and map, tucked away inside the closet.
Let's dissect this scene a little.
Problem #1: No alarm system went off inside our rooms.
Problem #2: The stairs were poorly marked.
Problem #3: The fire safety information wasn't by the door, but hidden away.
Coupled with the fact that the elevators were never repaired (they take less than a day to fix, unless something goes really wrong -- the dorm elevators broke all the time and would be back up within hours), they ran out of extra towels, pull-out beds, and blankets, and they tried to charge us for something we didn't order, I would definitely not recommend Embassy Suites to anyone looking to stay in Rosemont, Illinois in the future. I can't even confidently say "Well, they can't be blamed for the fire," and, even if it wasn't their fault, the way they handled it says enough for their safety precautions -- if you can call them precautions.
No, he's not joking. Our hotel is on fire. What, you're still in the room?
We rush to the doors, roommate G remembers to check the doors for heat before opening them, and we're greeted by smoke. Now, the Embassy Suites does not have a standard hotel set-up. Each floor is more like a balcony, or a mezzanine, that looks out onto the breakfast/dining area below on the second floor. When you exit a room, you're looking out into that six story drop, which is where the smoke appeared to be coming from.
As if the lack of alarms in the room weren't insult enough, the alarms out in the main area are quiet and hard to understand. I hear a male voice droning the same commands over and over, but can never quite make them out. The other two are in a near-panic, so I can't ask them to wait and hear it out, but I worry because I was taught multi-story building fire safety in my dorms. Namely, if there's a fire, you don't always want to go down, because you may heading right towards it. Seeing as we were on the second-to-highest floor, I thought that was a high possibility.
There aren't any signs for the stairs. There are glowy red EXIT signs pointing to them, but no indication that EXIT means STAIRS OVER HERE BY THE WAY. I had tried to notice the sign/map for them at the elevators, but the only thing I found was a tiny little plaque that you had to lean in to read that said "In case of emergency, use stairs." Thanks, fat lot of good that does me, considering you won't tell me where the hell they are.
I had, however, also determined to find them when the elevator lines were too long after breakfast -- one elevator was broken the whole weekend, and a second went down by Sunday. They were, I think in every corner of the building, but I only found the two on the far end, which just happened to be closer to our room anyway. The other two must have found them at some earlier point too, considering they both run ahead of me.
The stairs are metal and clang with every step and are eerily empty for a building being evacuated. One of the doors -- on floor 2 -- is wide open and smoke gushes in from it, but one more floor and we're outside. The fire can't have been going for more than five minutes and already firetrucks are there, police and firefighters hurrying people out the doors and across the street.
And then, silence. For about an hour, we are told nothing. People's reactions range from amusement -- somehow I doubt their roommates or belongings were in the building -- to lighting up to having a panic attack. Police direct cars and pedestrians away from the buildings, some assholes honk their horns because Chicago drivers are morons who can't see smoke, and the hotel occupants wonder if they'll be able to sleep in their rooms tonight.
We're finally let back into the hotel, informed of absolutely nothing, and find our room is just fine. The pizza is cold, but no other damage aside from the mental aspects. The rumors of the cause of the fire range from "Some dude said he lit his mattress on fire" to "I heard a bunch of guys yelling about smoking pot." The most reliable we hear on Saturday is that it was caused by a diesel generator from another convention that overloaded or something. Roommate A since read on the ACen forums that a broken generator kicked on because of a power surge -- the flickering lights I witnessed -- and started emitting smoke but no fire. Which would actually make it the hotel's fault, because why was their generator hooked up if it was broken?
It's only after we get back into the room that we find the fire safety information and map, tucked away inside the closet.
Let's dissect this scene a little.
Problem #1: No alarm system went off inside our rooms.
Problem #2: The stairs were poorly marked.
Problem #3: The fire safety information wasn't by the door, but hidden away.
Coupled with the fact that the elevators were never repaired (they take less than a day to fix, unless something goes really wrong -- the dorm elevators broke all the time and would be back up within hours), they ran out of extra towels, pull-out beds, and blankets, and they tried to charge us for something we didn't order, I would definitely not recommend Embassy Suites to anyone looking to stay in Rosemont, Illinois in the future. I can't even confidently say "Well, they can't be blamed for the fire," and, even if it wasn't their fault, the way they handled it says enough for their safety precautions -- if you can call them precautions.