HARRISBURG – A fire broke out in a closed concrete shaft that shot from the basement to the roof Crown Plaza Hotel Monday.
Fortunately, the fire was contained in the “blind shaft” that has pipes running through the building, said Brian Enterline, chief of the Harrisburg fire department.
No one was injured, and with the fire contained in the shaft, the damage to the hotel was minimal.
Enterline said the fire call came at around 11:25 a.m. and when the crews were on site at 23 S. Second St., smoke was coming from the front of the building on the first floor.
The Crown Plaza is a building with sprinklers, so the risk of fire is pretty low, he said, but that fire burned all the way down the shaft.
“We had essentially 11 floors that were affected by the fire in a blind shaft,” said Enterline.
What made it a labor-intensive fire was that the manhole only has two access points, he said, so crews had to break through a large cinder block wall to get water in.
It took about two hours to fight the fire as dirt and debris burned inside for years. But the blind shaft prevented the fire from spreading to the ground, Enterline said.
According to Enterline, the crews used a piece of fire fighting technology from the 1950s, a basement nozzle, an open nozzle that sprays water 360 degrees. It was thrown in from the roof to control the fire and smoldering debris below.
Traffic on Second Street became jammed as crews rerouted cars in the hotel complex.
A second alarm had gone off, bringing in firefighters from across the region. At least a dozen fire engines were on site.
It was not immediately known how many people had to be evacuated from the hotel. Some rooms suffered minor water damage but no fire damage.
The cause of the fire is being investigated, Enterline said.
