4 Women Die In Fire After 911 Call

Four Mississippi college students died in their second-floor room at a motel after they dialed 911 to report the front of their room was being swept by flames. The women were visiting the Birmingham suburb of Hoover Dec. 20th when the fire broke out at about 8 p.m., caused from a live-in motel maintenance worker’s unattended incense. High winds swept the flames on the lower level up to the second level of the 1960-era wooden motel, intensified by the motel’s location on a hill. One of the women dialed 911 to say their room’s front door was blocked by a wall of flames, and officials say the dispatcher told them to go into the bathroom and stay low. Arriving firefighters found the only hydrant was several hundred feet from the motel, and couldn’t reach the women because the fire had been pushed upward by the wind, and across the face of the motel, including the second floor balcony where the women’s room was located.[read more]

About 25 rooms were destroyed or damaged at the unsprinklered motel, but the few other motel occupants escaped uninjured. Investigators found the women’s bodies in the window-less bathroom. Investigators say the maintenance left the incense burning in his ground-level room, returned to find the room on fire and attempted to fight it. Two phones didn’t work when he then tried to notify the front desk of the fire. He used two fire extinguishers, which didn’t put out the fire in his room. Neighbors, passersby and other occupants then dialed 911 to report the fire.