Crew searches for possible victims in hotel fire
El CENTRO – After a pair of human cadaver dogs alerted to the possible presence of human remains, a rescue team that included city firefighters and one or more agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spent most of Wednesday searching for victims at the burned- out site of the Mayan Hotel.
El Centro Fire Battalion Chief Cedric Ceseña said the city reached out to the Orange County Fire Authority to ask for the use of cadaver dogs to search for bodies in the building.
The dogs arrived Wednesday morning and picked up a scent that might have been a body, Ceseña said. However, no victims had been found as of press time.
“We know the dogs were alerted, but we don’t have any confirmation,” Ceseña said. “The potential exists or it could be someone from the past. People have died there before.”
Firefighters had been at the site since fire was first reported at 11: 08 p. m. Saturday. More than 30 firefighters from six different departments were involved in combatting the blaze, which Ceseña said was so intense it was impossible to search for victims at the time.
Searchers, after being alerted by the cadaver dogs, cautiously began entering the building Wednesday on the east side of the building where the dogs signaled.
Ceseña said the problem is the building is very unstable, so emergency personnel needed to be careful to not be caught in a possible collapse.
“It’s slow, methodological work,” he said, adding it could take several hours to determine if there is a body in the building.
The weekend fire was the second fire reported at the vacant hotel in recent weeks. Firefighters extinguished a second- alarm fire there on Dec. 15. Although no injuries were reported in that incident, firefighters did rescue a woman who was on the second floor of the building.