
DATE: Saturday, November 22, 1997           TAG: 9711220372

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY LANE DeGREGORY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: KILL DEVIL HILLS                  LENGTH:   65 lines

HOTEL GUESTS FLEE KILL DEVIL HILLS FIRE

Flames climbed 10 feet above the Ramada Inn's roof Friday morning as a fire consumed a room on the top floor of the five-story hotel building.

About 40 guests, many wearing pajamas, stood in the hotel parking lot for four hours, watching firefighters carrying hoses climb in and out of balconies.

A maintenance worker who tried to put out the fire when it first started was treated for smoke inhalation. A guest jumped from a second-story window, and firefighters rescued his wife. But no one was injured.

Kill Devil Hills firefighter Glenn Rainey estimated that there was about $250,000 damage to the $10 million oceanfront hotel. The 172-room establishment had re-opened by Friday afternoon.

``It could've been a lot worse,'' Ramada Inn owner Sterling Webster said. ``We feel very fortunate no one was hurt. Luckily, we were remodeling that top floor, so no one was staying up there.''

The fire started in a heating and air-conditioning unit in the fifth-floor room, which was on the hotel's north end facing the beach road. Investigators said it was accidental. The fire was mostly contained to that room, but the rest of the hotel sustained heat and smoke damage.

More than 100 firefighters from Duck to Roanoke Island to Stumpy Point responded to the 7:20 a.m. call. They had extinguished the flames by 9 a.m., and left about two hours later.

The hotel did not have sprinklers or standpipes, Rainey said. A truck pumped 1,000 gallons of water a minute through a hose into the burning room.

Blair Schrader, a guest staying on the third floor, said, ``We could smell the smoke when we opened our door. It was all down the hall.'' Schrader, her husband, Mike, and their two young daughters were asleep when a hotel worker called to tell them to evacuate. The family, vacationing on the Outer Banks from Minnesota, left diapers, clothes and toys inside. They stood in the parking lot waiting to be allowed back in.

``We were nervous, certainly,'' Mike Schrader said, cradling his 2-year-old daughter, who was shivering in Sesame Street pajamas. ``You don't want to believe this is really happening. We're just glad it wasn't any worse.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot

Firefighters work to put out a fifth-floor fire at the Kill Devil

Hills Ramada Inn Friday. The blaze, which investigators called

accidental, started in a vacant room on the top floor.

Graphic

[side bar]

NO INJURIES

Everyone escaped the building safely. A maintenance worker was

treated for smoke inhalation, and one guest jumped from a

second-story window.

WHERE IT STARTED

In a fifth-floor heating and air-conditioning unit. There were no