History up in smoke
Inferno guts landmark; residents sent scurrying for their lives
EDITOR’S NOTE: In recognition of Canada’s 150th anniversary, The Herald is reprinting historic stories from the South Okanagan focusing on the biggest news story of each year.
March 1, 2000 – People scrambled for their lives, dropping from second floor windows, as the Three Gables Hotel perished in flames around them early Tuesday morning. The call came in to Penticton Fire Department just after 7 a.m. Miraculously, no one was seriously injured in the blaze.
Steve Levy, a co-manager of the downtown Penticton hotel’s tavern, said his room was already filled with smoke and his escape route blocked by fire when the hotel’s alarm woke him up.
“When I woke up, the alarm was ringing and my room was full of smoke,” Levy said while watching flames belching out the window of his former room.
“I jumped out of bed and went to the door, but the door handle was already warm, and when I opened the door a blast of heat came in. It was too much to get out, so I immediately grabbed my guitar and went out the window.”
Levy’s room was on the second floor, and he had to shinny down to a ledge and then drop the rest of the way. The same scene was being played out all over the sprawling hotel complex as residents escaped any way they could. Some ran through the building trying to alert other hotel occupants, but many of the hallways were impassable.
Anna Zamecnik had just stepped off the morning bus on Main Street when she saw people jumping onto a ledge at the front of the hotel, smoke pouring from the windows behind them.
“They were climbing down over a little roof, and one guy was running along this roof banging on the windows of all the rooms, trying to wake people up,” Zamecnik said. “Then what we saw was them (firefIghters} taking people out.”
William Utke, the hotel’s general manager, said he was lucky to escape a fire that appeared to be raging right below his room.
“My room is right over the pub and when I woke up I moved fast,” Utke said.
“Hot? My floor was already warm when I got up.” Utke was luckier than some – his room had a fire escape. Two elderly people and a man sleeping in a second floor room at the north end of the hotel were all rescued by firefighters, and by that time suffocating smoke was going through the building.
“We found this one guy up there, and he was just right out,” said one rescuer.
“I just hope to hell we got everybody, but we can’t be sure right now.”
At 9:45 a.m., fIre department officials received word that all occupants had been accounted for. Several employees of the hotel rushed to the scene, many weeping to see their livelihoods and the place they gathered to meet friends at for years being devoured by flames towering 50 feet skyward.
“I’ve been a chambermaid here for two years, and this just breaks my heart,” said single mother Rhonda Mueller. “That’s 75 years of history… just gone.”