Savvy travelers quickly learned to request rooms on the ground-level or no higher than the second or third floor so they were within reach of fire department ground ladders. The deadly toll from hotel and motel fires continued through most of the 20th century. Being trapped in a fireproof building was akin to being on the inside of a wood or coal stove with a lit fire. Little, if any, concern was given to flame spread over surfaces, unprotected vertical openings (stairwells, shafts, chutes, etc.) and the transom windows above doors to offices and guest rooms that allowed for ventilation. Lost in fire underwriter calculations were the people. These buildings could withstand both exterior and interior fire without collapse of exterior walls, ensuring that losses from fire were minimal and predictable. One reason for the high loss of life in hotel fires was the fact that so many hotels featured the so-called “fireproof construction” favored by fire underwriters of the era. In 1912, he wrote that there was a hotel fire every 33 hours in North America. Chief John Kenlon of the FDNY knew well the potential peril for hotel guests during fires.
