ATLANTA — It was a frightening morning for guests at a downtown hotel.
Parents at the Residence Inn Downtown Atlanta hotel couldn’t wake up their children and had no idea why. It turns out they all had been exposed to carbon monoxide and the entire hotel had to be evacuated.
“There was just an alarm,” one evacuee told Channel 2′s Tom Jones about what woke her up.
Some guests say they were asleep when they heard a fire alarm just before 9:00 a.m. Friday morning.
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“I was like, ‘Oh shoot.’ She was like, ‘Just leave our stuff.’ I was like, ‘Absolutely not. Like we are taking it and getting out,’” one guest said.
Several guests say they had to take the stairs to get out of the hotel. Jim Hoag from Texas says he had no problem getting from the ninth floor, but he says he saw a man in a wheelchair who was struggling.
“He got down, I think, 10 flights of stairs before somebody could come help him. His family helped him,” he said.
Firefighters say it all began when guests in one room couldn’t wake up their children.
“We did have a report of one unconscious,” Assistant Chief Greg Gray with Atlanta Fire and Rescue said.
We saw one man being treated on a stretcher.
Emergency crews arrived and spoke to hotel engineers. They quickly realized they were dealing with a major health hazard. “It was determined that we did have a CO, which is carbon monoxide, issue,” Chief Gray said.
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It affected the entire building, so they had to evacuate everyone over all 20 floors.
“We did go room to room. Floor to floor,” Gray said.
Three adults and two children were taken to the hospital for observation. The remaining guests were invited to keep warm inside the Candler Hotel across the street.
“The GM for this hotel said, ‘Come on over; we’ll take care of you,’” Hoag said.
Hoag came to Atlanta for the Peach Bowl. The carbon monoxide leak almost forced him to extend his stay.
“We just rushed to pack and we’re going to the airport now,” he said.
Firefighters are working to find out where the leak came from. And they’re looking into whether CO detectors were installed and whether they were working properly.
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