Human behavior in fire emergencies can have a significant impact
on what firefighters encounter when they arrive on the scene. Firefighters
rarely have an opportunity to find out what the occupants of a building
were doing before they arrived. This incident presented a unique
opportunity to evaluate what many of the occupants did before the arrival
of the fire department and how it impacted the loss of life and the rescue
situation confronting fire service and other emergency responders at this
incident. The information which follows is based on press accounts,
confirmed through interviews with fire officials and others who investigated
this incident and interviewed those present when the airplane crashed.
Room 416
Thirteen employees of a local plumbing supply company were
attending a seminar in a fourth floor meeting room (416) when the aircraft
crashed. (A diagram of the room is shown in Figure 2.) Four of these
people died instantly when the windows blew out and an expanding ball of
burning aviation fuel engulfed the room. Five others lived long enough to
take other actions. Three of them, their access to the exit blocked by the
fire, sought refuge in the bathroom. A fourth went to the telephone and
tried to call for help. The fifth tried to reach the door to the corridor but
was felled by the smoke and heat before he could reach it. These nine
victims were the only people to die inside the hotel. Four other occupants
were seriously injured but managed to escape the inferno in room 416.
What happened to these four individuals affected what the firefighters saw
when they arrived.
Immediately prior to the crash, the two instructors and 11 seminar
attendees in room 416 had just reconvened after a short break. One of the
instructors was writing on a flip chart at the front of the room. The other
instructor was standing near her at the front (west end) of the room, closer
to the door. The seminar participants were seated around a conference
table in the center of the room. As the presentation was about to resume,
the aircraft impacted directly below the windows of room 416.
After the fire, the other instructor, recalled, “I looked at Lynn and
behind her out the small window. I didn’t see the plane crash. All I saw
was this ball of fire which almost looked like it was coming at us in slow
motion.2 In another interview, he recounted, “There was a strange
airplane noise. Then a crash... there was a ball of fire coming at US.
The four occupants (including the two instructors) who were nearest
the doorway escaped into the corridor.
The first occupant believed to have escaped room 416, the instructor
who witnessed the fire through the window, later recounted, “I just thank
God for my Cub Scout training. I knew I must be on fire, so I just dropped to the floor and rolled.” After extinguishing the fire on his
clothing, the instructor ran west down the corridor, past the turn toward
the west stairway, and onto the balcony overlooking the lobby atrium.
There he yelled down to occupants and staff below that there was a fire in
room 416, and that 12 people were inside the room. (He was apparently
unaware that others had escaped.)
Moments later, the fire alarm system activated, releasing the
magnetic door holders keeping the balcony door open. When the door
closed, he was trapped on the small balcony, four stories above the atrium.
The fire door protected him from the fire’s effects but prevented his
reentry to the corridor because there was no hardware on the atrium side.
Firefighters judged that he was not in immediate danger and attended to
other occupants in more danger before rescuing him about one hour after
the crash.
The instructor writing on the flip chart and one of the seminar
participants also proceeded west down the corridor. As they approached
room 405, prior to reaching the stairway, its occupant opened his door to
investigate. The man in room 405 quickly realized that the building was on
fire and that the corridor had become unsafe and recognized that both the
instructor and seminar attendee had been injured and were in distress.
The three retreated into room 405, went to the window on the south side
to summon help, and while waiting to be rescued, sealed the undercut of
the doorway with towels to minimize smoke infiltration. All three were
rescued by Evansville firefighters using an aerial ladder 15 to 20 minutes
after the crash.
The actions of the forth occupant to escape room 416 are less clear.
The occupant of room 419 (directly across the hallway from room 416),
reported that when she entered the hallway and began crawling toward a
light at the end of the hallway (probably at the east end), she encountered
another woman who was burned and in severe pain. She later stated, “I
told her (the woman in the hallway) to get down and crawl. She said we’d
never get out and I said, ‘Yes we will; I’m not gonna die in here.’ Just
follow the light.”
Firefighters found three victims in the bathroom in room 416
huddled under a running shower. The occupants had turned on both the hot and cold water in an effort to protect themselves, but all had
succumbed to smoke inhalation by the time rescuers reached them. The
woman from room 419 reported hearing their plaintive cries for help as she
herself fled to safety. A fourth victim was found slumped on the floor
just outside the bathroom where it appeared he had tried to use the
telephone to call for help. One other occupant appeared to have tried to
escape the room but collapsed and died a few feet from the doorway to the
corridor.
Drury Inn Lobby
Two Drury Inn guests reported that they were eating breakfast in
the hotel lobby when the plane crashed. Both reported hearing aircraft
noise prior to impact. (They were probably in the lobby when the first
instructor to escape room 416 yelled down from the balcony that the
building was on fire.) They exited the building through the south exit
doors to the parking lot. Once outside, they heard calls for help from
occupants on the fourth floor (possibly the occupants of room 405). They
were joined in the parking lot by a bystander, who had run to the scene
from a nearby business. The three men then entered the building and
rescued several occupants in two successive attempts before worsening heat
and smoke conditions prevented them from continuing. They suspended
their rescue efforts when firefighters arrived on the south side of the
building.
Jojo’s Restaurant
Two men were working in the kitchen of Jojo’s Restaurant when
they felt the impact of the crash. One of them reported the fire cut off
access to the nearest exit. The other was standing in front of the grill and
fryers when they lunged forward as the ceiling caved in from the crash
impact. Both men assisted in efforts to reach two of their co-workers, a
waitress and a kitchen worker, who were pinned in the structure’s
wreckage. The second man estimated in an interview with reporters that
they worked unsuccessfully for about 15 minutes to rescue the others. The
two people pinned in the wreckage died.
Evansville fire officials estimate that as many as 25 employees and
customers escaped unharmed from Jojo’s Restaurant, using the front
entrance which was on the opposite side of the building from the fire.
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