Hotel Olympik Fire 1995
A fire at the Hotel Olympik on the evening of May 26th 1995 would result in the deaths of 8 people and injuries to more than 30 others. Lessons were learned that day.
Hotel Olympik opened in 1971 as a brand new purpose-built hotel with 318 rooms (831 beds) over 18 floors which made in the largest hotel in Czechoslovakia at that time. The reason it and the surrounding Invalidovna area were developed was for an athletes village i.e. Prague was a candidate for the 1980 Olympic Games (hence the name of the hotel) and the Olympic Stadium would have been built close to the hotel. This idea was dropped after Moscow entered the race. The building then fell into a state of disrepair and in 1990 it was bought privately.
On May 26th 1995 at 1807 an EPS alarm (optical and/or acoustic fire detection) sounded and was followed at 1809 by a smoke detection alarm on the 11th floor of the Hotel Olympik. More than 600 people were in the building at the time. Hotel staff confirmed that the Fire Brigade was on the way and then attended the 11th floor to see what they could do with hand-held extinguishers. With hindsight this was a mistake as they opened the door causing a backdraft and an explosion which spread the fire to the corridor. This injured one member of staff.
The first two Fire Brigade units arrived at 1816 and immediately called for other units. Their job was to suppress the fire if possible, to manage an existing evacuation and/or to move people to a safe place. Although the firefighters had oxygen masks, people fleeing rooms into the corridor and emergency stairs were being overcome by smoke requiring their rescue rather than fighting the fire.
The second unit was tasked with putting a ladder up the building to try and suppress the fire from outside. There were two issues. 1) the construction of the front of the building meant the fire trucks could not deploy ladders to the upper floors and 2) people who could not escape from rooms were now climbing out onto window sills.
By 1820 other members of the first unit were on the 11th floor trying to fight the fire and evacuate people. Another problem arises. The power to the floor has failed and the electronic door locks cannot be opened from the corridor side. As a firefighter knocks on one door he finds 6 or 7 people inside. Instead of trying to get them out through a smoke filled corridor he simply walked into the room, shut the door and sealed it with wet towels. He kept in touch by radio and all the people in this room survived.
By 1830 the Fire Brigade were working in three groups. The first was still trying to supress the fire. The second was evacuating guests to the ground floor and the third after 1900 was on the roof preparing for helicopter evacuation of seriously injured people. By the time the fire was officially declared as “extinguished” at 2144 there were 10 Fire Brigade teams comprising 96 persons.
The Investigation
The cause of the fire was located to a refrigerator in the laundry room on the 11th floor. The way that the refrigerator had been mounted onto a wooden shelf with minimal rear ventilation created excessive heat which ignited either the unit and/or combustible material on or above the unit.
Causes for the spread of the fire and smoke included hotel staff attempting to put out the fire with insufficient equipment, flammable materials in the room and corridor, an emergency staircase design which acted as a chimney fanning the fire and blocking the emergency exit above the 11th floor.
Causes of the inability of people to escape quickly included 1) poor or damaged exit signage and inoperative fire doors at the stairs exit of the 11th floor which limited escape from anything above the 11th floor.
Cause of death and most of the injuries was smoke inhalation with people found in the corridors, rooms and stairwell.
One of the recommendations made was that firefighters air tanks should have an alternate mask to allow them to get people through smoke filled areas to safety.
The hotel was back in business three weeks later. The building was renovated in 2015 with an exterior decoration that looks suspiciously like fire.
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