A fire heavily damaged a bottom floor room of a two story motel in the 1000 block of East Benson Highway late Tuesday night. An initial call to 9-1-1 at shortly after 11 p.m. reported a brush fire at the address of the Knights Inn and then hung-up. A single engine company was dispatched to the call to handle the brush fire.
A second call reported fire coming from a bottom floor room at the motel at which time a full alarm was filled out and dispatched to the motel. The first units that arrived on scene advised all other units en route that a bottom floor room was engulfed in flames. The smoke and flames were shooting out of the room and over the 2nd floor landing, threatening to spread to the rooms above the fire.
Firefighters pulled a hose line into the bottom floor room to extinguish the fire as additional personnel on scene searched the adjacent rooms to make sure they were empty. A second hose line was hoisted to the second floor landing to ensure that the fire didn’t spread into the rooms directly above the effected room below. Two rooms on the second floor had glass shattered due to the extreme temperatures but the fire did not spread into them.
The firefighters were able to extinguish the fire on the bottom floor, confining it to the room of origin. The bottom floor room sustained heavy smoke and fire damage with two units on the second floor sustaining smoke damage. Nine units consisting of 23 firefighters responded to the scene and controlled the fire 16 minutes after arriving. There were no injuries reported by firefighters.
Fire investigators were on scene and working with property representatives to determine if the room was occupied. They are still in the initial stages of determining the cause of the fire, no estimate of the damages is available.