06 January 2010

Fire At Detroit's Huntington Hotel

The Detroit News

Five people were injured when a fire engulfed the Huntington Hotel in Midtown on Thursday night.

Fire officials said three tenants were critically injured, two firefighters were injured and one person is missing. Multiple fire trucks were at the scene, west of Woodward Avenue.


Fire officials said at 9 p.m. that there are still people unaccounted for inside the building and there may be deaths.

Cheri Rice Murray, 58, said she smelled smoke in her fourth-floor apartment and was unable to make her way down the hallway because of the thick smoke.

"We broke the glass out of my window there," she said pointing up at the flaming building. "The Fire Department, they took us out of there on their ladder. If they hadn't, we'd still be in there."

Murray said she is one of 24 residents renting rooms on her floor. She pays $280 a month for her room with a bathroom.

Lawrence Walker, 55, who lives in the building, said his girlfriend, Ann Louise Roder, 67, is missing and presumed dead.

Walker said their room got real cloudy, and he stepped in the hallway and the smoke rushed in. "My woman yelled 'Help me!' I couldn’t even get back there. I couldn’t get back to her. I heard her say 'Help me, baby. Something went boom and I feel over. It was bad. It was so bad. I couldn’t get back to her."

A block away, residents said they heard an exploding sound that shook their apartment building.

Terence Simmons, 56, was wearing a gold party hat that said "Happy New Year" as he watched the fire. "We were decorating for a party, and now I want to go home and put it all away. Something tragic like this always seems to happen on the holiday."

The hotel, 109 W. Alexandrine St., is a five-story structure. Residents rent the rooms by the month . Fire officials said it is a two-alarm blaze. The building is nestled between buildings belonging to Detroit Medical Center and the Childrens DMC.

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