It is not a Best Western, it is a One-Star hotel.

We saw smoke detectors in the hallway of our hotel but there is <u>only one stairwell in it as well, a very common situation</u> I imagine. Don't forget the technique of knotting clothing or sheets to use in going out a window, and roll wet towels and stuff under the door to block smoke.

How many of you have stayed in a Paris hotel with more than one staircase?

What a tragedy. I just returned from Paris last night and never even considered my escape route from a fire. Only one staircase in my hotel also. Those poor people.

It's a real tragedy -- and I agree -- who would be thinking about escape routes in the event of a fire?

Most NYC low-rises have fire escapes. It's quite a fixture of the skyline. (And mandated by building codes?) But I guess Paris buildings are structured differently.

The Management of Health &amp; Safety Regulations is an EU directive and all countries within the EU must comply.

The regulations are just as strict as in the US. In the UK the Health &amp; Safety Exectutive is the enforcing authority and they can inspect any premisis without warning and if the building does not comply they have the authority to close it down. France has a similiar organisation.

As there was only one stairwell and no means of escape they were not compling with the regulations and I would suspect there will be a thorough investigation by the authorities.

Doesn't help the poor people who have died though.

&lt;&lt;According to CNN it is in the 9th and when I looked at the news clip I could see a Best Western sign. Is it the Best Western Lorette Opera? Also, apparently the temporary residents were housed only on the top floor, the rest being tourists.&gt;&gt;

I seem to have spread misinformation. (Sorry!) Now I see on the news reports that neither of these things appear to be true.

I put this on the safety thread by mistake;
Paris hotel blaze kills 20

PARIS, April 15 (AFP) - Fire swept through a central Paris hotel filled with immigrants and tourists early Friday, killing at least 20 people, 10 of them children, and injuring more than 50 others in one of the deadliest blazes in the French capital in 20 years.

Witnesses and firefighters said some guests leapt from windows to escape the blaze, which destroyed the six-story one-star Paris-Opera hotel, located behind the upmarket Galeries Lafayette department store and near the Opera Garnier.

As an investigation got under way, a police source said the cause of the blaze at the hotel - used both by ordinary tourists and as temporary housing for needy families - was &quot;undoubtedly accidental.&quot;


Investigators at the scene &quot;have not found, according to their preliminary tests, any evidence that would lead us to think this was a criminal fire&quot;, the source told AFP.

Alfred Millot, head of Galeries Lafayette's fire service, saw hotel residents jump from the upper floors and throw their children through windows in desperate efforts to save their lives.

&quot;With our own equipment, we started fighting the fire from the ground floor. I came running and people were already jumping through the windows. I saw bodies, windows in flames, people crying out for help,&quot; he told AFP.

&quot;It's hard in that kind of situation to tell people to calm down. They jumped.

People on the first floor threw their children out the windows,&quot; Millot added.

Several prostitutes working in small hotels in the area also witnessed the fire.

One of them, Laure, a 41-year-old brunette, said she heard &quot;screams and cries for help&quot; from the guests who were sleeping when the fire broke out, some of whom jumped from their windows, landing on the street with a &quot;thud&quot;.

She told AFP she and several others helped some women in the hotel to escape through a skylight window.

The bodies of several victims were found in the rooms, and one firefighter was seen struggling to bring the body of a woman down a ladder.

French President Jacques Chirac called the blaze &quot;one of the most painful catastrophes that has ever plunged Paris into mourning&quot;, adding: &quot;This drama gives us all a feeling of horror and has deeply upset us.&quot;

Ten of the 20 dead were children, including one baby. Eleven of the more than 50 others injured suffered serious injuries. Two firefighters were slightly hurt.

Emergency services said the death toll could still rise. One official said the number of dead would have been much lower had residents remained in their rooms and not tried to flee the flames.

Among the injured were French, Senegalese, Portuguese, Ivorian, American, Ukrainian and Tunisian nationals. No information was immediately available about the identities of the dead.

More than 250 firefighters and emergency personnel rushed to the scene in the city's ninth arrondissement after the fire broke out at about 2:00 am.

Firefighters had the blaze under control by 3:30 am, but the last flames were only extinguished just before 6:00 am. But they were continuing to search the top two floors for victims, battling thick smoke and weakened floors.

The acrid smell of smoke permeated the air several blocks away from the scene hours after the blaze had been doused. Police closed several roads near the hotel to traffic.

An emergency medical centre and a makeshift morgue were set up in Galeries Lafayette near the ground-floor cosmetics department. The Red Cross set up an emergency post nearby to offer psychological counselling to survivors.

One couple at the Red Cross post near the Trinity church were still awaiting word of their missing children.

Paris police chief Pierre Mutz said 75 people were staying at the 32-room budget hotel, which local residents said was home to numerous immigrant families, many of them African.

A fire department official said many of the rooms at the hotel had been rented by the Paris town hall and the welfare department to house needy families.

Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin visited the scene as did Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe.

Mutz said the hotel did not appear to have any safety problems. He said the high number of victims was because the fire broke out suddenly and spread very quickly, causing widespread panic.

The police chief brushed aside suggestions that 100 people were housed in the building. &quot;That is false,&quot; he said.

Firefighters said the only way out of the hotel was the main entrance, but the staircase down was quickly engulfed in flames and many residents were trapped on upper floors.

They added that safety regulations did not necessarily require additional exits, and that the building was subject to regular safety checks.

&copy; AFP

Subject: French News

The Canadian reports that I am reading say it is Hotel Paris Opera a 6 floor building very close to Galeries Lafayette and that injured victims were being treated in the Galeries Lafayette. It also reports that this was a one star tourist hotel because of proximity to the sites in the area.
It appears to have been a housing location for needy African immigrants as well .What a nightmare. How very sad.

cambe, the above article suggests that it might well be the case that no additional exits other than the one staircase are required.

Le Monde says it was the L'Hotel Paris-Opera on rue de Provence. They say it was an establishment of &quot;5e categorie&quot; which means...?

I think the 5th category is another way of looking at star ratings:
4L is top
4*, 3*, 2*, 1* (5th category)

I've seen a similar sort of reference in a British publication.

Here is a link to a map of where the hotel is located:

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com...lt-384x364.jpg

Yes Willtravel I see that but the regulations state quite clearly that all buildings must have a safe means of access and egress. I cannot see how any risk assessment would pass one stairwell as a safe means of egress in an emergency.

Cambe, this is what the BBC says:

&quot;Fire services said the hotel had a single entrance - adding that a separate fire exit is not mandatory for older buildings.&quot;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4447001.stm

In that case, how sad that it takes a disaster such as this to show up the flaws. When it comes to health &amp; safety I suppose it is nearly always reactionary which is such a pity. Prevention is always better than cure

I can't help but think the level of hotel this was had something to do with it, but perhaps the fact that it was one of those residential hotels -- I read it started in the breakfast room. We have cheap hotels like that where I live also, very cheap for visitors and are also used for immigrants or those on welfare, etc., who stay by the week or so.

I don't think it is realistic to expect all hotels in Paris to have a lot of exits, especially older buildings. There are many very small hotels in Paris and it would put them all out of business -- these hotels can't be putting in new exits and doorways, stairways, etc. How would tourists like it if no hotel was allowed to operate that didn't have more than one stairwell. I don't think I've ever stayed in a hotel that had more than one stairwell in Paris, actually, and I stay in moderate level 3* hotels.

It sounds like most victims died from jumping out of the windows, and perhaps they would have survived if they had waited for help. But then again, who knows.

It's not realistic to retrofit all of Paris, certainly, so I guess that staying in such hotels implies a certain inevitable risk. If the stories are to be believed, the hotel had passed its fire inspection and had done all that was required of it in this respect, within the past month. I can't see any positive resolution with a raging fire on a lower floor, and guests trapped on the top floors.

Five hundred Americans die of lung cancer every day, most of it caused by smoking cigarettes.

(150,000 per year - American Cancer Society)

Since this is turning to the point of &quot;silly&quot;, I'll add my thoughts. I don't consider it a &quot;tragedy&quot; when someone jumps our of a plane and dies because he forgot to put on his parachute or to check it first. Similarly I get less worked up about lung cancer deaths which are MOSTLY caused by people's unwillingness to give up a habit that is known to be bad and dangerous.

But being caught in a burning building and being unable to escape and dying as a result is INDEED a tragedy in my book -- whether one person died or a thousand.

i am still trying to figure out which hotel this is.i cant find *one* webpage on the entire internet with a photo of this hotel on it.

to add to the confusion the hotels neighbours also seem to be hotels.and there are a dozen hotels in paris with opera in the name.

had anyone heard of *this* hotel opera?

Metallus - Where is your compassion? If only one person dies needlessly...it is a tragedy.