SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- A fire apparently caused by a careless smoker destroyed a downtown hotel used as a rooming house for disaster victims, killing one person, injuring nine and forcing the evacuation of than 100 residents, authorities said.
Early Monday police said all residents had been accounted for. Police and firefighters had spent more than 12 hours wondering if at least two bodies might still be found in the 105-room Morningside Hotel.
The fire was first reported at 9:30 a.m. Sunday at the four-story brick building. The difficulty in finding tenants occurred because some left the area without registering at a Red Cross station set up in a nearby homeless shelter, said police Lt. Richard Kilgore.
The fire was believed to have been started by a careless smoker on the third floor and firefighters were expected to release the results of their investigation Monday, Kilgore said.
The blaze was brought under control by 3:30 p.m. but firefighters remained on the scene through the night to extinguish any possible flareups and even changed shifts in early morning to remain at least through the morning rush hour, police said, because the structure was large enough to contain embers that could rekindle the blaze.
Firefighters, working in the bitter cold wind-chill temperatures in the single digits, were able to conduct several room-to-room searches for missing tenants but no other residents were found, authorities said.
The blaze also forced the evacuation of a neighboring Presbyterian church amid fears a wall of the hotel would collapse on it. No damage was reported at the church and many worshippers stayed to help residents who lost their rooms, said Driscoll Bell, the local Red Cross director.
'If it was going to happen, it was the right time,' Bell said. '(The church) was getting ready for a service. They opened up the church facilties (after the fire). Food prepared for a reception was given to the victims.'
The hotel, built in 1924, primarily housed victims of other fires and disasters who were able to pay for low-rent housing, Bell said. The Red Cross and Salvation Army often placed people in the hotel, he said.
The building did not have a sprinkler system but did have smoke alarms that worked, Kilgore said.
One hotel resident, identified as Jewellus Wood, 49, was dead on arrival at South Bend Memorial Hospital.
Three men remained hospitalized late Sunday at Memorial. Scott Phillips, a hotel employee, was in critical but stable condition in the intensive care unit suffering from burns. The two others, one with a broken ankle and the other with burns, were listed as stable. Another victim was in serious condition with smoke inhalation at the intensive care unit of the St. Joseph Medical Center.
Five other people, three tenants and two firefighters, were released from Memorial after receiving treatment.
Those displaced by the fire were helped at the United Religious Center homeless shelter, near the site of the fire.
The loss of shelter for so many low-income people sparked an avalanche of donations. A collection station was set up at the city's bus terminal and traffic lined the city's main streets well into the night as area residents offered clothes, food and cash for those left without beds.
'I've been down here for the last hour,' Kilgore said Sunday night. 'We have squad cars in such a way on the main highway so there is a lane to pull up to. People have been bringing in blankets, food and cash. It hasn't stopped since the appeal went out.'
