Another fun night at work....

Lifted79CJ7

OK, First off let me just say that I work at a hotel. Well, I was working late tonight and was getting ready to leave (around 12:45am) when the security guard called over the radio and said he was stuck in the elevator between the 10th and 11th floors. We laughed at him (Myself and the night auditor) and I decide to go get him out (our elevators have seen better days-just like any 20 year old elevator). I went over to retrieve the tool to open the elevator doors when he said to hurry, there was a smoke coming in. :!: Hmmm, that's not a good sign. So I start haulin' ass like a rabid K9 is after me. As I make it around the desk, the fire alarm goes off and I kick into overdrive. It was at about floor 8 that I realized I picked out the wrong week to start working out my legs. On the way up, I radioed the auditor (3rd shift front desk person) to call the chief engineer and tell to get his butt in, ASAP. Of course this is the week that I am acting General Manager. Fuuuuuuuuunnnn. :smile: I made it to the 10th floor and open the door. Everything looks OK so far, but by now the security guard is yelling for me to come get him out, that he can't breathe or see. People are starting to look out the doors of their rooms andI yell at them to evacuate the hotel immediatly. I round the corner (the hotel is in the shape of an L) and see tons of white smoke. Oh crap. #-o I made it to the elevator and am holding my breath due to the smoke. All I could think about was getting him out. The smoke was only from the waist up, so I took a deep breath and started breaking in. I opened the door and he was about 5 feet above the floor. He opened it up and all I could think about was a kid in college that did this (climb down) and slipped and fell down the shaft. I told him I was gonna go up one floor and get him out. I hauled it up one more flight and the 11th floor was worse (The stairwells have exhaust fans to clear the smoke out thank goodness.). I had trouble with the door and holding my breath was almost impossible after running up 11 flights of stairs. We got the door open and pulled him up. He was OK, but he wouldn't have lasted too much longer in there. Standing up the smoke was soo thick that you could barely see your hand in front of your face, but the floor was clear. As soon as he was out, I started banging on everydoor yelling things along the lines of "GET OUT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL, EVACUATE THE BUILDING IMMEDIATELY!" I then heard the security gaurd tell me that he was on the 12th floor doing the same thing. At the end of that floor, I instructed the security guard to the Fire Control Room to locate the fire. I had noticed earlier a water leak in that same elevator shaft (there was a big storm outside), so I was thinking of a short. The smoke smelled like an electrical fire. (Oh, and don't ask why I know what an electrical fire vs a regular fire smells like, I just wasn't the smartest kid on the block and wanted to play with everything as a child.) Anywho, he made it downstairs right as the Fire Dept. showed up. They went to the control panel and diagnosed the location. I was meanwhile running my ass along every floor banging on every single door yelling to evacuate while helping people out of their rooms and pointing to the safest stairwell. I was sweating like a pig by this point. I also think I had said the word evacuate about eighteen gazillion times. Did I mention that smoke and lungs don't go together? Anywho, we got everyone out safely, I had them check out our rooms that we knew we had disabled guests in, and everything appeared to be dying down. I took the fire crew up the elevator (guest elevator, the guard was in the service elevator at the other end of the hotel) and we stopped at 7. This was the lowest I had seen the smoke. The doors opened up and you couldn't even see down the hall, it was so cloudy. Man, we really evacuated in time! Anywho, the fire crews were doing an awesome job looking for the fire starting on the lowest floor and working their way up (I let them know that I was willing to bet it was the motor on the roof for the service elevator, but definitely better to be safe than sorry!), then our elevator stopped working. The doors would close but we wouldn't go anywhere. Fun. So we got off, I went down to the desk and they headed up with our chief engineer (had just arrived) to scope things out. After a while, everything was calm and they had isolated it to that elevator. The fire marshall came over and informed me it was ok to allow guests back into the hotel (did I mention that it was 1:30am by now?) from outside where they were standing in their underwear. Oh, did I mention the HUGE storm we were having?? Yup, I had a BUNCH of happy campers on my hands. I opened up the ballroom doors and ran to the restaurant and started filling pitchers of water and soda and threw on two restaurant sized coffee makers. We grabbed as many towels, blankets, drinks, cups, etc as we could get (the rest of the hotel was not secure yet, so we had to work with what we had in the restaurant and at the front desk) and started passing everything out to try and make everyone happy. To sum it up, we had to reset the fire alarm system a couple of times, along with doing a lot of other little details, but I am really surprised at how un-complainy the guests were about the whole situation. We were able to get all of the smoke cleared from the floors (thank you VBFD!) and allow everyone back to there rooms around 2:30am. Turns out that one of the brushes on the elevator motor exploded and burned it up really bad-it had nothing to due with the leak I had seen earlier. I guess the wind outside just blew the smoke straight down the elevator shaft where the poor security guard was riding it. Funny part is that we had just had the tech out that morning doing a sevice job on it. Needless to say we will be giving them a call in a couple hours. All in all, I smell like ass, have a splitting headache, it's 5am and I have to be back at work at 8am to work until 11pm. :(: Boy, I won't be grumpy!! Wish me luck with dealing with all of the guests tomorrow!! #-o Jack

jeepsr4ever

Jack...your a hero man!! :sa:

Atransman

YOU DA MAN!!

pyagid

:shock: :!: :shock: :!: :shock: WOW I dont even know how to respond to that. Obviously Job well done -paul

cheapjeep

:t: =D>

cj5 buggy

=D> good Job... way to keep it together...

Goose

Friend when it comes to the "Deal with it" credo found elsewhere on this site ..You dealt with it! and extremely WELL. :sa: :t: Famous Quote (I just don't remember who!) "It's not who or what you are, It's what you do when it matters!"

rollen dean montoya

:mrgreen: =D> :lo1l: :? :t:

jeepsr4ever

your in my sig now

ROBERT11

:sa: :sa: :sa:

W.T.Sumner

I was a Volunteer fire fighter for 6 years and I say you did a great job. I hope your company rewards you for your heroic actions.

rollen dean montoya

the hotel should give lifted some type of reward. inaction could have lead to a disaster. good job dude :t: =D> =D> later, rollen :lo1l:

Lifted79CJ7

Yeah, all of us did a great job, especially for a staff of three at almost 1 in the morning. It would not have gone as smoothly if we all hadn't worked as a team. =D>

On a side note, I sent this to some of my friends that I have worked with in the past and I recieved this response:

"Fun times. We had a fire a few weeks ago...had to evacuate. Apparently, an employee threw a cigarette in a trash can on the third floor. The whole place reeked. That was at 1am. Then the next morning at 7, one of our exit signs exploded and caught some insulation on fire. Try to explain to guests why you have 2 fires in a 5 hour period!"

I tell you, I have only been doing this for 10 years, but I could write a novel! Domestic disputes, dead bodies, close calls, car accidents, chasing bad guys (literally, I've chased my fair share!), scam artists, kinky sex poeple, scary sex people, public intoxications, public nudity (usually goes with public intoxication), oh man, I could go on and on. I guess that is why I really don't mind my job that much, I get a lot of personal satisfaction of a job well done. Now if I can just finish this stupid Jeep!!

Jack

Oh, and I forgot to add, one of my friends was an F&B manager at another large hotel in another city while Bush was running for president last time. He was about to give a speach in a couple hours when their boiler literally exploded! She said there were secret service people all over the place. It caused a lot of headaches because they had to shut down for a few weeks for repairs. What a fiasco!

Goose

Oh yeah! I knew I had seen that somewhere...Sorry man just taking your quote for a test drive...I brought it back didnt I ?!! An It' so applies in this case! ( 2 weeks on the board and already I'm busted for sig swiping! Sheesh will I never learn! :?: )

Lifted79CJ7

OK, I give up! So my roommate and I are waiting on dinner to cook tonight when he looks out the sliding glass door and asks if I just saw some smoke. I look out and didn't see anything. We waited for a second or two, then a big waft of smoke comes from the deck above us. I walked outside and looked up and saw a different neighbor (lives on the 3rd floor) in my upstairs neighbor apartment and there is tons of smoke. I couldn't tell if there was a grill out or not, so I took a ew more steps back and asked what was up. Oh, it's cool, just a grease fire. What??? JUST A GREASE FIRE? So I go up there and there is the girl with her baby by her door and ask if everything is OK. She looked pretty shook up, so I went in to see what all was happening. Man, I rounded the corner to the kitchen and there was just a wall of smoke. I have never seen a wall of smoke, but that is exactly what it looked like (smoke behind glass, couldn't see 2 inches in front of your face).

I see my other neighbors throwing bags of flour around and I couldn't see any flames. The doors were all opened and we started to clear it out to assess the damage. Looked like it was out, but the stove was still billowing. I ran downstairs and grabbed my box fan. I know, I know, feeding the fire, etc, but hell we needed to clear it out to asses what was going on. My buddy Mike took it and dissappeared into the smoke and all I could hear was Where's the plug?!?!? Where's the plug?!?!? Anywho, he found it, plugged it in and the kitchen started clearing out. They had unloaded every box of flour and baking soda they had on the fire (electric range so water isn't very smart). Smoke was still pouring out from where the spillage area was, so we cracked it open and dumped more baking soda in it. About that time, the fire department showed up and took it from there.

After about 10 minutes the husband came home. She told us, "Oh look, here comes my husband! He's gonna be sooo mad!!" He pulled into a handicapped parking spot sideways about 15 spaces down, opened his door and just stared. Poor bastard had that deer in the headlights look. You could just see what was running through his mind. "Oh Lord. What happened. Oh man, all I know is that this is not good at all. Why is my wife outside looking at me like that? Crap, I should have stayed home today" Poor guy. We all kinda started laughing at him and mocking him for we knew how it looked. "Hey honey, dinners done!" Anywho, all was well, there wasn't any real damage and everyone was ok, even the two kids.

PLEASE EVERYONE CHECK YOUR FIRE EXTINGUISHERS, SMOKE AND CO2 DETECTORS TODAY WHEN YOU GET HOME!!! FIRES ARE NO LAUGHING MATTER AND THIS WEEK I'VE DEALT WITH ENOUGH FOR A LIFETIME!!!

#-o
Jack