Cartoon

Hotel Fire Heroes

College Students Come to Rescue in Fire

In the chaos of a late-night fire, three students on spring break risked their lives to save others.

It would be dawn in less than an hour. For a week straight, Daniel Moreno, Brian Stanley, and 23 other juniors and seniors from Westfield State College in Massachusetts had relaxed on white-sand beaches and club-hopped around Acapulco, Mexico. On their last night, Moreno and Stanley, who'd been friends and workout buddies for years, partied until after 4 a.m. Now, back in the room they shared at Best Western Playa Suites, they figured it was time to turn in.

But as Stanley's head hit the pillow, he heard glass shattering and bolted upright. From the balcony of their fourth-floor room, Moreno and Stanley saw black smoke pouring from the hotel's adjoining tower. "We watched one window blow out, and then another, and heard people shouting," says Stanley, 21. Students were throwing ropes made from twisted bedsheets off their balconies, and a couple of them were trying to climb down.

Moreno, also 21, ran out into the corridor and began pounding on doors and shouting, "Westfield!" and "Fire!"

"Some people thought we were joking," says Stanley, a criminal-justice major who is a volunteer firefighter in his hometown of Thomaston, Connecticut. "But after they saw the smoke, they didn't think it was funny anymore."

Almost all the hotel's 502 rooms were filled with college students from across the United States. "People were yelling, 'What the hell is going on?' and trying to get out," says Ryan Senecal, a 21-year-old junior who had a room on the second floor. "It was pure chaos." Because of the hour, the students were on their own; only a minimal staff was on duty. The smoke was attributed to a fire in a laundry chute, say authorities. And while a spokesperson for the hotel -- which suffered smoke damage and was closed for several days -- asserts that the fire alarm system had passed inspection just two weeks earlier, several students have insisted it was not working that night. "I pulled an alarm and nothing happened," says Drew Nalewanski, 22, a business management major.

As the smoke thickened, Moreno raced upstairs to where other Westfield students were rooming. "I thought of all their parents back home," he says. "It motivated me."

Meanwhile, Stanley was downstairs helping people get through the smoke-filled lobby. There he joined forces with Nalewanski, who comes from four generations of firefighters. Just back from his own night out, Nalewanski had come across the first group of students to get out, who were milling around outside the hotel's entrance. Many were wearing only shorts and T-shirts and were clutching their passports.

"Let's go," Nalewanski said. He and Stanley wet their shirts in the lobby bathroom and wrapped them around their mouths and noses so they could breathe. Then they charged up the stairs. In the meantime, Moreno had made it up to the eighth floor before turning back. "Kids had no idea what was going on," he says. "I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I made sure I hit every door."

Nalewanski and Stanley found Moreno on the fourth floor, vomiting and struggling to breathe. After making sure he could get back down on his own, they continued upstairs, down the corridors on every floor, slamming their fists on every door.

Protected by their makeshift masks, the two fought their way to the top, then turned around and began their descent. By then, says Stanley, "there wasn't any air. My throat and lungs just burned."

In the end, while a few students were treated for smoke inhalation, no one was seriously hurt. Even more incredible, all the Westfield students made it back to Massachusetts later that same day.

The trio have become local heroes. But Stanley didn't crow to his friends. "I told a couple of them. Then I started getting calls from other people, asking, 'Why didn't you tell me?'" he says. "But I didn't think it was that big a deal."

Westfield president Evan Dobelle disagrees. "I have a great deal of pride in these young men and how they were able to react in such an emergency," he says.

How much danger were they in? "My roommate thought I was stuck inside," says Nalewanski. "They all thought we were dead."

Trying to describe how he found his courage that morning, Moreno says, "You run on adrenaline, and your instincts tell you it's the right thing to do. There were hundreds of people in the hotel. It was our obligation to help them."