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CNN Live Today

Firefighters Battle Hotel Fire in Oklahoma City

Aired March 22, 2002 - 14:34   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Some dramatic pictures to show you now from a five-alarm fire, a hotel fire in Oklahoma City. Eight firefighters battling this blaze on a balcony at the hotel. A roof collapsed on top of them. Amazingly, none of the men seriously injured there.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The whole large piece, about a 25-foot long piece, fell on us at once, knocking us to the ground.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was all around us. You just make sure you get your facilities back together and make sure you're OK. And so I was able to be pulled from that. I couldn't crawl away from it. It had me pinned.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My driver got inside and burned his lips and his face. And it fell on me and we just crawled out. And it was kind of orange for a while, but we had lines in place. So we were able to -- we were kind of tense for a moment, but we got it.

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HEMMER: More now on the blaze that they battled. Major Brian Stanaland is an Oklahoma City Fire Department public information officer and joins us now live there from Oklahoma City. Good to see you. How is everybody doing today?

BRIAN STANALAND, OKLAHOMA CITY FIRE DEPT: Well, everyone is doing great. Really some tense moments for firefighters yesterday. It was a very scary situation for them, as that piece of the soffit fell on top of them, with the flames that your viewers saw. And fortunately, we escaped with only minor injuries.

HEMMER: Fortunately, indeed. I understand -- first of all, let's back up. A five-alarm blaze. The call comes in. What happens from that point to what we're seeing on videotape?

STANALAND: Well, we got the call a little after 10:30 yesterday morning. The initial units that arrived on scene had one or two hotel rooms on the third floor totally engulfed in flames, with flames shooting out of the roof. So I immediately called for a three-alarm response. Then firefighters began to battle this fire.

It had a common attic over 16 units. We had about 40 mile-an- hour north winds that were pushing this fire, traveling the length of that unit. Fortunately they got on either side of it and got it stopped from spreading.

But in the process, the way you fight a fire like that, you have to knock that ceiling down, reach up there with the pike poles. Pull that ceiling down and then get the hand lines, the water, up in the attic area to be able to extinguish that type of fire. And that's exactly what they were doing on that balcony. They were pulling down those ceilings and unfortunately it came down in a large chunk, with a lot of heavy fire on top of them.

HEMMER: Brian, how do they do that? It's my understanding they were trying to poke holes in the ceiling to access it?

STANALAND: That's exactly right. If anybody has a fireplace and you have a little tool called the fireplace poker, that's what we use. We call it a pike pole. It's a larger version of that. You stick that up into the ceiling and then you pull down.

This ceiling was made of wire mesh covered with stucco, so it came down in large chunks. But the idea, you poke holes in the ceiling. You knock out, pull down a little bit of that ceiling tile, the ceiling area. And then you put your nozzle up in the attic area, fog it out, create a fog pattern and lots of water in there. And that's how we extinguish those fires.

HEMMER: Listen, Brian, watching this videotape, when we first saw it first thing this morning -- I'm sure you've seen it as well. Does it strike you as flat-out amazing, that no one here was injured more than just a few minor injuries?

STANALAND: It really does. The thing that's important to realize too, it was not only those three firefighters under there. There were actually about eight firefighters in that general area. And that soffit had fallen on many of them. The three that you really caught on video were very fortunate they were not injured any worse.

Lieutenant Jack Thompson was the one that was using pike pole to pull down. He's the one that basically disappears in the rubble. And then he actually was knocked into a hotel room. Fortunately the door was open and so he was OK in that way.

HEMMER: I understand some children, possibly two or three young children playing with matches -- is that the culprit?

STANALAND: That is exactly right. It was actually one child, a 2- or 3-year-old child, started this fire playing with either matches or a lighter.

HEMMER: A million dollars in damage. Is the hotel completely wiped out?

STANALAND: No, it's not. Firefighters did a great job in stopping this fire. There's actually four separate wings that are in a square, if you will. We only had damage to one wing of that hotel. So we actually saved three additional wings of that hotel. So they did an excellent job.

HEMMER: Hey, listen, hats off. And pass it on to your men, too. Really heroic work, there.

STANALAND: Thank you.

HEMMER: Brian Stanaland from Oklahoma City, in the Oklahoma City Fire Department. Thank you, sir. Much appreciated.

STANALAND: Thank you very much.

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