Update: About 50 Wawasee students, three bus drivers injured, but only one injury is serious; victims treated at hospitals in Warsaw, Goshen and Fort Wayne.FORT WAYNE – A hotel fire on Fort Wayne’s north side late Monday is believed to have been started by an electrical problem in an empty guest room, officials said.
Fort Wayne firefighters responded to an alarm at the Fort Wayne Marriott Hotel, 305 E. Washington Center Road, just after 11:30 p.m. Monday.
The blaze began in a heating unit in a room on the second floor of the hotel’s west wing, according to a report from the Fort Wayne Fire Department. Crews arrived and discovered heavy smoke, but the the building’s sprinkler system extinguished the fire. No injuries were reported.
An unknown number of guests from 14 rooms waited in the hotel’s lobby for a short time while fire crews checked the area, Marriott’s general manager David Kidd said. After the area had been cleared, guests were relocated to another section of the building, he said.
“No one was evacuated outside,” Kidd said. “Everyone was waiting in the lobby.”
Firefighters determined the fire to be under control by 11:45 p.m.
According to the report, the hotel remained operational Tuesday other than the first and second floors of the west wing, which had “significant smoke and water damage.”
The blaze remains under investigation by the Fort Wayne Fire Department.
