Acapulco hotel fire sends spring breakers home
A hotel fire at the Best Western Playa Suites in Acapulco sent student spring-break travelers rushing down stairs to safety on Sunday morning. At least one student went to the emergency room for smoke inhalation, but there were no serious injuries. Some students claimed that belongings such as money and credit cards were stolen in the chaos. Here is a quick YouTube video [shown at left] of the scene outside the Best Western Playa Suites.
It’s hoped there were no parents who heard about the fire on the news before their son or daughter called home to report that they were OK.
Web buzz: So far there is no mention of the fire on TripAdvisor, but HotelChatter got the word out and the New York Daily News reported that StudentCity.com set up a hotline for parents whose kids booked their trip through them.
If you were a student staying at the Best Western Playa Suites during the fire, tell us about your experience. Did you hear any fire alarms?
— Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel Deal Blogger
[Image: YouTube]
18 Comments on “Acapulco hotel fire sends spring breakers home”
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March 18th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Was staying in the tower that burned, room 1554, and was coming back from being out right as the fire was starting. We were hanging out with some friends in the lobby when someone began screaming about the fire. No alarms went off. We went out to the back through the middle near the pool and watched smoke starting to billow out the back of the building and out of the balconies of the back rooms. People were shouting for help off of some of the balconies. Everyone outside began yelling “FIRE, GET OUT OF THE BUILDING!” but other than that, we heard no alarms.
March 18th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
I was in the opposite tower on the 12th floor. We were already suppose to be home but our flight was delayed 24 hours and we got put in rooms for the night. We woke up to a student city guy banging on our door screaming fire. None of the fire alarms worked. We were evacuated one hour after the fire started in the other tower. As we exited, we saw a worker passed out in a chair at the entrance of the hotel. He died from smoke inhalation. Student city did the best they could in the situation, but it was very unorganized. Best Western did NOTHING!
March 18th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
While I feel for the students involved in the hotel fire in Acapulco. People need to realize that different countries have different standards and that in many countries you will not find the safty devices that are required in US hotels and other public area’s.
It is the responsibility of the individual traveler to research and understand these diffrences when traveling. It is also the responcibility of the traveler to decide whether or not it is an enviroment that they wish to travel in/to.
March 19th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I am a Penn State student that was down there on break staying in the first tower that did not burn. I wasn’t suppose to even be there because our flight was suppose to leave Saturday night but was delayed 26 hours till Sunday at 1am. Because of this we were put in hotel rooms at the Playa Suites where we had been previously staying and I was put in tower 1 (the one that didn’t have a fire). We were awoken at 5am with banging on our door just tell everyone to get up and out of the building. We had been on spring break for a week already and we had gotten use to loud drunk people. In addition to that studentcity had given us free passes to go drink (which seemed to be their answer to any customer complaint) and many of us were still drunk. My friends never made it even out of building one because they thought it was a joke and kept sleeping since we had only gotten an hour or two. When we saw the firetrucks and people outside we went downstairs and I noticed fire alarms on almost every floor pulled but not going off. I have much more information about what we went through after that if you are interested but we are seeking compensation from studentcity.
March 20th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I am a student from Chapel Hill and I was staying on the 18th floor of the building that was not on fire. Just like the other spring breakers who had been there for a week we thought that the banging on the door was a joke as well until we went downstairs and were met by a cloud of black smoke. The fire alarms did not work but student city did the best they could in the situation to get every person out of their rooms and to safety, the hotel on the other hand did nothing. In response to the Penn State student’s comment I do not see how you can want to or even expect compensation from student city it was not their fault and they did everything in their power to fix the situation. Especially since you had already stayed your full week what about the people who got sent home early from their spring break because of the fire they deserve compensation.
March 21st, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I was in room 1265, of the tower that was on fire. It was roughly 430 when my roomate was awoken by screams, looked out the belcony and saw smoke. He instantly woke myself and our two other roomates up, screaming fire fire fire. We were so out of it because this was our first day of traveling that we almost didnt believe him until he opened the front door. Instantly the room filled with the most painful smoke possible. It stunned the lungs, tingled the throat, and teared up your eyes. The smoke was so thick that the visability was maybe at most two feet. We couldnt leave and had no where to go. We grabbed a bucket of water and the towels out of the bathroom. We kicked out our window hoping to ventalate, but that was very unsuccessful. Stuck on the belcony we made mask with the towels and soaked them in water, because of how hard it was becoming to breathe. There were about 10 other groups of people stuck on balconies in which we were all screaming to each other “What are we going to do?” “Were going to die?” “Why isnt there help coming?”
An hour and a half later, a firefighter came to our room, and grabbed us. He had nothing! So we grabbed pillows shoved them into our face and ran down the hallway into what we later found out was biohazeradous smoke due to plastic burning in the basement. Finally we got outside and it was ciaos. The media and reports are very inaccurate. Maybe I feel this way because I experienced it first hand. There WERE injuries. MORE, ALOT MORE, than one person went to the hospital, Infact my roomate had to get 15 stiches because of gash on his leg. THE HOTEL DID NOTHING, THERE WAS NO MANAGMENT TO BE FOUND, NO ANSWERS, NOTHING!!!!! Student-City took action, but only kicking out everyone of both towers, and kept everyone out. Once the fire and smoke ended around 7:30. We still werent allowed back into our rooms at 1:00 in the afternoon. 3,000 others were stuck on the streets with no money, no water, nothing. Again, this was alot worse than it is being protrayed.
March 23rd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I was staying at the playa when the fire occured, It was our first night there and we were returing from our night out (~4:00 am) when we arrived back at the hotel we found a disater area, complete and total chaos- people coming out of the building in tears, with smoke on their hands and faces. We were all worried about our friends because they were still in the towers and there were no fire alarms to wake them. More than an hour after the fire had started our friends staying in the affected tower came down in their pajamas with no shoes- they were awoken by a drunk student who broke down their door (not a student city rep, fire fighter, or playa staff member). Student City and Playa Suites kept everyone standing on the street for more than 3 hours- with no information, no towels and no water. Most of the evacuees had no money or clothing- When we told student city staffers we were cold and thirsty they told us the sun would be rising soon and it’d get hot real fast. When they allowed us back in the building to collect our things there was still conflicting information as to whether we could stay in our rooms or we had to leave, and if we had to leave for how long, many students exhausted from the ordeal hearing it was safe to stay- went back to sleep, the hotel even opened back up for breakfast. We soon found out the air wasn’t safe to breath, so it was ok to eat there so long as we didn’t breath? Not only did they have no emergency system, when it was all over they took us to a night club with no working bathrooms, and while there was no food or water, there was free beer (student city’s answer to everything). They kept us there all day and told us they were working on things. They didn’t realize to feed us until 2:00pm in afternoon, after the automated message they’d been playing for our parents came on and told us (they would be continuing to provide us with food and water)- to which we all shouted, what food? What water? We referred to is as the Astro Dome. Its terrifying to imagine what would have happened if it had been a bigger fire, both Student City and Best Western Playa Suites should be ashamed and embarrassed- if they went out of business yesterday it would not be soon enough.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
coming home from a sick night out to find that the federalies and the fire department schemed to steal a couple hundred thousand from a bunch of helpless americans
March 25th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I am a student from Western New England College and was on the fourth floor of the tower which was on fire. I was awoken not by a knock on my door but with trouble breathing and a horrible smell filling my room. When I went to leave I was faced with a wall of smoke outside of my door and 0 visability. With only my shirt over my face I darted to the stairwell and luckily got out safely. We were all then tossed into complete uncontrolled chaos with no direction whatsoever, not to mention none of our personal belonging.
There were no fire alarms or sprinklers and I don’t care what country I was in a building is NOT safe without these things. Everyone from that building suffered tremendously and there were many injuries (over 20 that I know of).
Everyone from that tower was taken away to an empty club and left there for hours without any information and none of their belongings. When we finally returned, under our own accord, to the hotel we were allowed to go retrieve our things and view the damage. Everything we owned reeked of burnt plastic, all items on the floor had been soaked, and many, many people were missing valuables including large amounts of money, passports, cell phones, etc.
I along with many others were then shlept to different hotels, ultimatley cheking into four different rooms over my 1 week stay in Acapulco. (including being checked back into the burnt and still reeking building two days after the fire)
My roomates, friends, and I, hopefully along with everyone else involved, are seeking compensation not only for our time lost during our vacation but for the series of inconveniences we faced. StudentCity’s complete lack of disaster planning caused for an extremely stressful and unnecessarily expensive vacation.
Anyone with any information about seeking compensation for the trip please contact me at lcraig@wnec.edu
March 25th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
StudentCity’s website put up this for the people effected by the playa suites fire
http://www.studentcity.com/playa_suites_form.php
I somehow doubt that they will compensate anyone for anything, but, it’s worth a shot
March 25th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
After the tragic death of my 22 year old son Nolan Webster last year at the Oasis Cancun, I have been committed to creating awareness related to the dangers of vacationin in Mexico. Check out http://www.mexicovacationawareness.com
Thank you
March 27th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
My son Drew and his friend were the young gentlemen that covered their faces with wet t-shirts and ran up to the 18th floor working their way down, banging on all the doors to get everyone out. I am very proud of them, but quite upset with Student travel services for the way he was treated afterward. Discussing this with them now.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
My name is Mallory, and I am a student at Purdue University. I was in Acapulco with five other girls, and we awoke our last night there at 4:30am to the scariest scene of our lives. It has been really hard to get the story out around here because about 90% of the spring breakers during the week of the fire are “East coasters,” so all the news is out there. I was also on the 12th floor of the tower that was on fire. My roommates woke up to people screaming and thought it was just people coming back from the clubs, but then they realized they couldn’t BREATHE and people were SCARED… NOT having fun. I did not hear anything and they had to shake me to wake me up, but I felt like I was in a dream. Everyone just ran out into the hallway (or what we hoped was the hallway since we couldn’t see ANYTHING) and tried to get to the stairs, helping people out and waking them up on our way. Running down those 12 flights of stairs seemed like it was taking forever and we kept wondering if we would run right into the fire below us. We had no idea where it was!
The girl in front of me fell down a few stairs, and I helped her get up to keep going. I cut my foot pretty badly on who-knows-what, and it also got severely infected, so I had to receive treatment for that when I got home. These injuries were extremely common, since most people were barefoot the entire morning/day. I am extremely impressed, however, how the students came together to support each other and help each other. EVERYONE was making sure that people got out ok and taking risks to help their peers.
There is no excuse for a fire to get that bad. None at all. Fire alarms and sprinklers are STANDARD emergency preparation tools, and it is costing the hotel a lot more money now to fix the damage than it would have if the level of severity could have been prevented. There is no excuse for the physical and emotional damage that was caused to hundreds of spring breakers. It has been over a week since the fire, and there are still nights when I wake up from nightmares and realize I am yelling “everyone get out now!” (Kinda weird I know… but that’s how much it affected people.)
There was no food or water for about 5 hours (4am-9am), and when the hotel was finally serving food, one of the workers tried to prevent me from getting in because I had no shoes on. Even though my shoes were in the BURNING BUILDING, he said I was “breaking the law” if I entered without shoes. Breaking the law???? Are you serious? Your hotel is potentially KILLING innocent spring breakers because you don’t have proper fire safety procedures and you’re telling ME I’m breaking the law for not wearing shoes? And let’s not even talk about the response time from the fire department… 40 minutes? For a while I thought they were just going to let everything burn… felt even more like a dream. Standing outside looking at the two towers of the hotel and running down those stairs gave us a TINY dose of what it may have been like in NYC 9-11. It makes me even more grateful for our advanced response teams and health care.
I was traveling with Sun Splash, and I want to THANK them for their help. Our flight was at 11am on Sunday, and we were standing outside helpless all morning wondering if we would ever get home. Our travel agents Chase and Miguel along with one of the girls in our group ran into the building (which was still unsafe), got our belongings, and got us on a bus to the airport. We barely made our flights on time, and we made it safely home to Chicago and then drove back here to Purdue. Chase and Miguel were continuously checking on us during the morning to see if we were ok, and I cannot thank them enough for their support and for taking many risks in order to get us home safely. I know Student City had many more students traveling with their company, and they did the best they could with the resources at hand. No one could have predicted this. I am lucky that I was able to leave Mexico, but I am so sorry to those who just got there when this happened and had their entire break ruined. I am also sorry to those who were delayed on their way home. I am just grateful that everyone is safe now, and hopefully Acapulco learns from this situation. It might be a long recovery process, but we’ll all be stronger for this somehow.
March 30th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
The reason the fire started was because somebody lit clothes on fire and dropped them down the laundry chute! We just got back from the hotel next store to there and they found out that the drunk spring breakers started the clothes on fire. Besides, you should all be ashamed of yourself for getting so drunk and throwing beer bottles off the balconies, potentially almost killing people!You think it’s great drinking so much that you end up puking day and night - it is an embarassment to the USA!! The vulgar language and crude acts are disgusting. Go back to college and take some courses on moral and ethical behavior. And to all the parents, if you only knew what your kids are REALLY dong on their srping break you would NEVER pay for them to go away again!
April 1st, 2008 at 5:10 pm
My boyfriend and I slept through the fire for two hours at the Playas. No fire alarms, no phone call, no one came to get us out. My boyfriend, thank god, couldnt breathe and opened he eyes up and couldnt even see me laying next to him. He got me to the hallway, where we than had to blindfully evacuate 17 flights of stairs. I was in hysterics. When I entered the streets of Mexico, we had no money, no passport, and no clothing(not even shoes). Yes I understand that Playas as well as Student City was dealing with putting out the fire, but where was the plan? We sat in the streets of Mexico until 9 pm the following night. Still with no food, no water, no place to rest, and still no shoes. Student city staff members were not helpful during the crisis, actually were rude and commented “do see there is a fire going on”. Yes I think I see that I slept through it tahnks to you and your un-safe practices. When i was finally told by another escapee that everyone was headed to night club where food/water would be supplied, we jumped on the bus. Nothing was there except beer, glass on the floor, cleaning products, loud music, and over flowing toilets. Mind you we still have no shoes. And guess what! No student city staff around. After talking to otehr kids, one guy, told us, he was lower down and luckliy he recieved a phone call, so he went into the hallway and started pulling the fire alarms, NOTHING! Still having no plan, we walked back to the Playas, still with no shoes, only to find there was still nothing new. Student City had nothing to say. And only people with medication were able to go get there belongings. Yet people arruiving for the day were able to check into the “good tower”. Finally around 9 pm, the remaining 13 of our group showed up(plane flew in late and didnt arrive in time for the fire), who were being told the whole day that we were fine. They were sent to a bar as well with no food, no water, and belongings were stolen from there luggage when promised student city staff would attend to their belongings. After almost being put into a desolate motel(outside the city…where Student City specifically says in their guidelines do not go to), we were lucky enough to find a newer motel that would accomadate us. Student city said yet again that they would take care of expenses for food and the stay, the motel staff had not heard such a thing. For the next two days back and fourth from hotel to hotel, paying for food and water(vouchures were given at un-realistic times of the day) and being bused 40 minutes back to Playas to experience our “all inclusive” took a toll on our group. Finally being put back into the Playas 3 days later, our rooms smelt of fire(my boyfriend and mine luggage and belongings destroyed anyways), soot and ash was everywhere, the place reeked of chemicals, and one of the groups room door was kicked in. Anyways our vacation really was not one. I came home thinking that I would be okay, and was having really bad anxiety, kept having flashbacks of the fire, and ended up having to talk to someone. So what I am asking is where do we go from here? Anyone heard anything of civil class, because even though it is in another country because they have bought Best Western for their company, I ahve heard that they still ahve to follow the same fire precautions as any other Best Western around here.
April 6th, 2008 at 8:15 am
I was in Acapulco that week and staying in CopaCabana thankfully. I did not hear of the horrors of this story till the middle of the week. However on my plane ride home I overheard someone saying that someone had a picture of the individual who started this fire and they posted it at a number of the events(clubs) offering a free spring break trip next year to anyone who knew this kid and could bring them to his whereabouts. From what I overheard this individual was somehow found and was in the process of being tried for arson and attempted murder. I am not totally clear on all these details and if anyone else heard anything about this guy please post
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:50 pm
As with all of you, i was directly involved in the Playa Suites/Best Western fire in Acapluco. I feel that there has been so much recent attention and support with regard to the fire that we should all ban together to do somthing for ourselves and the future saftey for spring breakers. So i’m making a facebook group for all who were affected and involved. The group will be called Acapulco FIRE Spring Break 2008 - for all who were affected. Please pass it on.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Was in the hotel that was on fire on the 15th floor with 3 other friends which who were all already alseep by the time the fire broke out. Woke up 1st time to.a chair being thrown out a window.didn’t think anything of it other then a drunk spring breaker so I went back to sleep. About 45 mins later I woke up again to screaming in the hall which got me very mad so I got up to go see what the problem was and it turned out it was one of the last people to exit the building at the end of the hall (we were the last room in the hallway) screaming there was a fire. I could not see him at that point as the room began to fill fully with black smoke and I coldnt even see a foot infront of me in the hallway. The second I inhaled the smoke I knew there was gonna be problems as it stung my lungs and had me grasping for air. I ran to awake my friends and waited for them to reach the door and had them wait there so I could find a way out of the smoke. The emercency stairs were locked. But that wouldn’t have been safe because the fire was already comming up those stairs. I made it to the end of the hallway (barely bcuz of all the pitch black smoke I inhaled by then) and I called back to my friends that the end of the hallway was a little clearer and it was ok to just run straight to me. To run to the sound of my voice. They finally reached me and we made our way down all the flights of stairs.I thrn went back up to help people get out . Btw. No fire alarms. Emergency exits locked. Each floor had a fire hose at the begenning of the hallway. The one I tried to use near the fire did not work. And one fire extingusher didn’t work as well. All that time in the buliding I had nothing covering my face. I made it to the point where I just couldn’t help nemore because my lungs were just so filled with this poisonous smoke. I also want to note I did run into 2 kids who were also trying to get people out. One floor we reached I believe around the 17th me and one of the guys made it half way thru the hall and just collapsed as we have had enough of the smoke. If anyone knows who those 2 were I’d like to now their full names as we became friends that week seeing each other out once everything cleared over. Anyways back to the story. We all made it out and I was treated for smoke inhilation outside the hotel. I was throwing up black fluids for a week and was coughing up black smoke for a couple days as well. All from the smoke I had inhaled. We had to spend the next 24 hours with no money food clothes or place to stay. My friends and I were never given our money back for the rediculous trip. And lastly the fire was caused by a kid who threw his cigarette down the laundey shoot. He didn’t light his clothes on fire.