Updated 5/14/2008 9:43:54 AM
ATLANTA -- "I was in my room on the 42nd floor, trying to do a little work, had a basketball game on in the background. My cell phone rang from another guest saying that there was an alarm and maybe we should leave." That's how Scott Hammond of Chicago found out that Atlanta's downtown Marriott Marquis Hotel was being evacuated late Tuesday night.
Hammond was one of more than 700 guests ushered out of the 52-story hotel when a fire apparently created a cloud of potentially dangerous chlorine gas in the basement of the parking garage. But getting out wasn't that easy.
"It took a little while to get on an elevator," Hammond told 11 Alive News. "Some of the guests were filing over to the stairways. It's a long walk down 42 flights of stairs," he added, "I had to wait for 3 or 4 elevators. They kept coming and opening up full, so that tells you how many people were coming out."
But Hammond says the hundreds of evacuees remained calm as they filed out onto the street. Many were offered rooms at the nearby Hilton Hotel, while the Atlanta Fire Department's Hazmat team answered the emergency call around 10pm. They quickly extinguished the fire, which apparently began in an air conditioning unit and caused a chlorine leak that turned into vapor.
Atlanta Fire Captain Bill May said no one was injured and none required any medical treatment. Firefighters had the situation under control enough for guests to begin returning to their rooms around midnight. May said investigators still have not determined the exact cause of the blaze.
