Dupont Plaza Hotel fire

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The Dupont Plaza Hotel fire was a tragic fire that occurred on the Hotel Dupont Plaza (now San Juan Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino) on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1986.

The fire was initiated by three disgruntled employees of the hotel that were in the middle of a labor dispute with the owners of the hotel. In the end, the fire claimed 97 lives and caused 140 injuries.

This is considered to be the most catastrophic hotel fire in Puerto Rican history.

1 Background
2 The Fire
3 Casualties
4 Aftermath
5 See also
6 References

[edit] Background

The employees of the hotel were in the middle of a labor dispute for higher salaries with the owners. Three of the employees: Héctor Escudero, José Rivera López, and Arnaldo Jiménez Rivera, planned on setting several fires with the intention of scaring tourists that wanted to stay at the hotel.

[edit] The Fire

The hotel's labor organization called a meeting for the afternoon of Dec.31, 1986. At the conclusion of the meeting the members voted to go on strike. At the end of the meeting, around 3:30 PM, a few men placed opened cans of a flammable liquid commonly used in chafing dishes in a storage room adjacent to the ballroom on the ground floor of the hotel. The storage room was filled to the ceiling with unused furniture from the hotel. While some of the labor organizers created a distraction by staging a fight just outside the doors to the ballroom, three men lit the fuel ablaze. The fire ignited the furniture and burned out of control, growing to massive proportions, and flashing over. After flashing over in the ballroom the superheated gasses swept up the grand staircase into the lobby of the hotel. From there the fire was sucked into the open doors of the casino by the smoke-eaters present throughtout the casino. Most of the deaths occured in the casino as guests discovered the only other egress from the casino was chained shut. Some guests lept from the second-story casino through plate-glass windows to the pool deck below. Others perished on upper floors of the casino from the deadly smoke. Others were consumed as they rode the elevators to the lobby only to discover the conflagration when the doors opened. The fire ultimately claimed 97 lives.

[edit] Casualties

The total of casualties of the fire have been estimated at 97, mostly by smoke inhalation.^[1] Most of the victims were burned beyond recognition.

[edit] Aftermath

The fire at the Dupont Plaza Hotel spawned several amendments in security policies in hotels around the world.

More than 2,000 claims were filed against the hotel. The litigation surrounding the fire was, at the time, the largest civil litigation case in U.S. history with over 200 plaintifs, 250 defendants and more the $2 billion in claims. Eventually the hotel management and most of the other defendents in the civil case settled with the plaintifs. The remaining defendents achieved a defense verdict.

Of the three employees accused of the fire, only one: Héctor Escudero, is still in prison. Armando Jimenez and José Francisco Rivera Lopez were released from federal prison in 2001 and 2002 respectively.