2 injured in hotel explosion
Transformer blowout in basement blamed for blast that ‘sounded like metal clanging’
Steve Bingham was across the street from the Whitehall Houston hotel on Friday afternoon when he was startled by a booming explosion. Bingham, a guest of the hotel, looked up and saw a plume of black smoke rising from the north facade of the downtown hotel.
“I heard a booming sound. It sounded like metal clanging,” Bingham said.
Minutes later, Bingham said he heard a second, smaller explosion coming from the direction of the Whitehall. By around 1:30 p.m., emergency crews had responded to the incident at the 12-story, 259room hotel at 1700 Smith St., a highly-rated facility at the center of the downtown business district.
Houston Fire Department Deputy Chief Blake C. White said the blast was caused by a transformer explosion in a basement electrical room.
“Three contractors were down there replacing a circuit breaker,” White said. “One of them sustained major injuries — burns for sure, probably smoke inhalation.”
The man, whose injuries were described as lifethreatening, was taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital. A second man left the scene with a bandaged hand and was transported to the hospital, White said. The third did not sustain any major injuries, White said.
Fire from manhole
Observers and fire officials said the resulting fire shot up from the manhole, burning the light-colored exterior of the building and staining the sidewalk and facade black with soot. The fire, however, never made it inside the building.
And while a number of hotel guests and employees of nearby buildings all described a loud explosion to the Houston Chronicle, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing, Tanya Taylor, strongly denied an explosion took place. Taylor attributed the incident to a small electrical fire caused by a transformer going out.
At Two Allen Center, just a few blocks away, management notified residents in an email that the explosion had “caused rolling blackouts.”
“While the extent of the damage is not yet known,” Two Allen management informed residents. “It is possible that there may be additional outages as electrical circuits are rerouted and re-switched.”
A third of a mile away, Blake Green, who works at One Allen Center, said he was ordering lunch at a food truck parked near the Whitehall at the time of the explosion.
“I heard a boom and saw a huge, large flame followed by smoke,” Green said. “It shook everybody up.”
People near the hotel were running away and were shocked by the explosion, Green added.
From across the street, Bingham said he could see two men being taken away on stretchers — one appeared to have his hand wrapped in bandages, and the other looked like most of his clothes had been removed.
“I was in the far end of the hotel; all of a sudden the power went off. Now we’re just waiting to see what happens,” said Jaywant Subramaniam, a guest at the Whitehall.
Two employees who work at the building at 500 Jefferson in Cullen Center Complex, across from the hotel, said the lights in the building flickered after a loud boom was heard from across the street.
Relocated guests
HFD’s Blake White said power to the hotel likely would be cut off at least overnight. As of Friday afternoon, the hotel was not checking out current guests but put a hold on checking in new ones.
“We’re relocating them for their own comfort,” Taylor said.
Center Point Energy was dispatched to the scene, spokeswoman Leticia Lowe said. The injured contractors were not employees of Center Point or the Whitehall.
All guests and employees of the hotel were evacuated, Taylor said. None appeared to have been injured.