The Express-Times
(TNS)
Fifteen people have been displaced as a fire broke out in one of the rooms of a century-old Easton hotel.
Flames ignited around 9:40 a.m. Saturday morning at Hotel Lafayette, 11 N. 4th St., which sits across from the Easton police station and Easton Arts Academy elementary school and is about a block away from Easton’s Centre Square.
Easton Police Captain of Field Services Salvatore Crisafulli confirmed to lehighvalleylive.com a city police officer saw smoke on the top floor of the building and was the initial 911 caller.
City Deputy Fire Chief Chad Gruver told lehighvalleylive.com flames ignited inside a bedroom on the fifth floor of the five-story building. Everyone escaped safely on their own and there were no reported injuries, he said.
Crews attacked the fire from both the interior and exterior, Gruver said, and it took them about 20 minutes to get the flames under control.
In the end, there was fire damage mostly to the room the blaze originated in, and some smoke damage to the remaining fifth floor, the deputy fire chief said. The apartments below on the four other floors sustained water damage, he said.
Firefighters faced some challenges in fighting Saturday’s blaze.
Gruver said the size and age of the building meant there were no standpipes. Crews had to utilize alternate measures to bring water into the building, he said.
A portion of Hotel Lafayette, including the fifth floor, has since been deemed uninhabitable by city fire officials.
Cristina Maisel, regional communications manager for the American Red Cross Greater Pennsylvania Region, told lehighvalleylive.com on Monday the organization’s Disaster Action Team currently is assisting 15 people displaced by providing them with food, shelter, and other essential supplies.
The Red Cross initially set up a shelter at Paxinosa Elementary School but has since moved the displaced individuals to a temporary shelter inside Shiloh Chapel, 201 Brother Thomas Bright Ave. in Easton, Maisel said.
Red Cross volunteers remain onsite Monday at the church to provide residents with food, relief supplies, emotional support and other assistance, she said.
North Fourth Street and nearby roads were shut down during the incident. The Lafayette Bar, a jazz club on the same block, posted on the business' Facebook page it remains open despite having some fire damage.
“We are working to get everything back to normal in the damaged sections of the building,” the posting states. “We appreciate the well wishes for the safety of those affected.”
The cause of Saturday’s blaze remains under investigation by Easton fire officials. The blaze, however, has been ruled as accidental, Gruver said.
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