On the 31st of December, 1986, patrons gambling in the casino of the Dupont Plaza Hotel in
San Juan, Puerto Rico noticed a light haze of smoke in the air.
Talk of a fire in the kitchens rippled through the room.
Some stayed where they were and carried on playing.
Others, uncertain, gathered their chips and started making their way to the nearest exit.
Although they didn’t yet know it, the room in which they stood was shortly to be consumed
by the second most lethal hotel fire ever to take place in the United States.
San Juan was and is a popular destination for tourists seeking a tropical climate, extravagant
restaurants and a lively nightlife.
The beachfront neighbourhood of Condado is full of prestigious hotels offering comfort,
luxury, and beautiful ocean views.
Among those hotels in 1986 was the Dupont Plaza Hotel.
Originally established in 1963 as the Puerto Rico Sheraton, the Dupont Plaza offered a
number of facilities for its patrons, including a casino, two ballroom areas, an open air
swimming pool and bar, a lounge and discotheque, a rooftop restaurant and a two-level penthouse
entertainment space.
All this was in addition to 423 rooms in a 17-storey tower block.
While the guest experience at Dupont Plaza was generally excellent, not all was well
for the staff who worked there.
Tensions had been running high between hotel workers and senior management for some time.
Of the 450 workers at the Dupont Plaza, 250 were members of the local chapter of a large
union organisation known as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The Dupont Plaza Hotel management and Teamster union representatives were embroiled in an
ongoing series of debates about employee wages and contract changes.
As the end of the year approached, there was no end to the conflict in sight.
Frustrated, the union voted to strike, with their planned action starting at one minute
past midnight on the 1st of January, 1987.
This date and time was chosen in order to cause the most inconvenience possible to the
hotel, as it would disrupt a planned New Year’s Eve penthouse party.
A last-ditch meeting between hotel management and the union took place on the afternoon
of the 31st of December, 1986, but it failed to hold off the planned strike action.
Three union members – 35-year-old maintenance man Hector Aponte, 40-year-old bartender Jose
Lopez, and 29 year-old waiter Armando Rivera - were particularly disgruntled at the result
of the meeting.
Before they left the hotel, they decided to take some direct action.
They may have been inspired by the actions of others.
Since the dispute began the hotel had suffered a number of small fires – all of which seemed
to have been deliberately set.
These had all been noticed quickly and extinguished by hotel staff… but had nonetheless caused
significant inconvenience to hotel guests.
The three men decided that another fire would be the best way to demonstrate their feelings
to hotel management.
They went to a storage room on the ground floor, adjacent to the south ballroom.
A small can of fuel similar to Sterno – a gel fuel normally used for heating food indoors
- was placed under some stored furniture that was still in its corrugated cardboard packaging.
The fuel was lit… and just moments later the flames spread rapidly to the boxed furniture,
and then to the partition walls of the ballroom.
The three men fled, and within moments the fire was entirely out of control.
Hotel staff quickly noticed the smoke, but were unsure how to respond.
For the most part they had received little or no fire safety training.
One security guard went to an upper floor to seek out a supervisor, while another attempted
to call for help using a phone, but found that it was out of order.
The flames spread rapidly through the lower floors of the hotel.
Surviving witnesses described how conditions changed extremely quickly.
Most guests first noticed a light haze of smoke, which did not seem life-threatening,
and prompted only some of them to begin evacuating.
Within minutes, however, this light haze became a descending ceiling of roiling black smoke
that started a panicked scramble for the exits.
Around 150 guests were present in the casino.
It was due to close early that day, and so was more crowded than it normally would be.
As guests searched frantically for a way out, they discovered that some doors had been locked
by management in order to prevent theft.
Some guests attempted to push their way through one of the only set of doors that were unlocked…
not realising that these particular doors only opened inwards.
As the ceiling of smoke descended below head height, patrons used chairs to smash plate
glass windows and jump to safety, often sustaining serious injuries in the process.
Despite this, jumping was, in many cases, the correct decision.
Minutes after the fire began, flashover occurred, and a wall of fire moved through the casino,
instantly killing all those who remained inside.
Elsewhere in the hotel, many guests remained unaware of the fire.
The fire alarm system in the tower was non-functional at the time of the disaster.
Residents there learned of the fire when they saw or smelled smoke, received a warning phone
call from reception, or spotted fire engines congregating outside.
Those who tried to flee found the corridors and stairwells already full of smoke.
Some managed to make their way outside by wrapping towels around their faces.
Others were forced back into their rooms, and then out onto their balconies.
From here, trapped guests took various courses of action.
Some climbed down wooden latticework on the outside of the building, while others clambered
to higher balconies to escape the smoke.
Some contemplated jumping, but were dissuaded by firefighters shouting through loudspeakers
to remain where they were and await rescue.
Guests on the upper floors were able to flee to the rooftop restaurant.
There they broke windows and climbed up wooden latticework to reach the uppermost portion
of the roof, from which they could be rescued by helicopter.
The guests in this part of the hotel self-organised, with volunteers remaining behind to guide
any late arrivals on the upper floor to the rooftop.
The first helicopter rescue was made by a private pilot, who happened to be in the area
and spotted smoke.
At his own risk he ferried a number of trapped guests to safety, before being joined by helicopters
despatched by the National Guard and Coast Guard
Emergency services were on the scene within ten minutes of the first calls.
Firefighters ran hoses into the smoke-filled building, while injured staff and guests were
evacuated on loungers from the pool area.
Guests in the tower – many of whom had taken refuge on their balconies – were rescued
using ladders and ropes, or lead out through the smoke-filled stairwells by firefighters
with breathing equipment.
The rescue effort continued well into the evening, when the main body of the fire was
finally extinguished.
In total, 97 people were killed.
The vast majority of the dead – at least 84 people – were found inside the casino,
where it was noted that most deaths had occurred as a result of burns rather than smoke inhalation.
Of the survivors, 146 sustained injuries, many of them life-changing.
An investigation by the National Fire Protection Association concluded that numerous factors
had worsened the impact of the fire.
The non-functioning fire alarm system in the tower, a lack of staff training, the fact
that sprinklers were only installed in the laundry area of the hotel, and locked and
inadequate exits in the casino.
The hotel workers who started the fire were soon arrested and charged with arson and murder.
It was established that the intention of the fire was to put pressure on management to
surrender to union demands, not to kill.
The union categorically denied all knowledge of their plans, and made it clear that the
three men had acted alone.
Aponte, who physically started the fire, was charged with two concurrent 99-year jail sentences.
Rivera, who provided the fuel, was given 75 years.
Lopez, who had goaded the other two men into starting the fire, was sentenced to 99 years
in prison.
The incident prompted a federal review of the adequacy of local and regional fire safety
legislation.
Within three years of the Dupont Plaza disaster, the Hotel and Motel Fire Safety Act was established,
mandating all hotels and government buildings to install smoke detectors in all rooms, along
with water sprinkler systems where the building was more than three storeys high.
The Dupont Plaza hotel remained closed for six years, changed ownership and underwent
a major renovation project at a cost of $130 million.
In February 1995 the hotel reopened as the San Juan Marriott Resort and Stellaris Casino.
Guests staying there today might be reassured to learn that the Marriott hotel chain is
a world leader in the implementation of fire safety.
They employ specialist fire safety engineering teams to consult on their hotel design and
refurbishment programmes, and collaborate with academic institutions to conduct fire
safety research – efforts which, hopefully, will ensure that this remains one of the most
deadly hotel fires that the country will ever have to face.