A fire was reported in Hotel Plaza on Austurstraeti in Reykjavík yesterday morning. The hotel was evacuated and no one was harmed. The fire appears to have started in a motor that runs the ventilation system after it burnt out.
From the city center. The photo is not related to the story. By Páll Kjartansson.
The fire department was notified of smoke coming from the hotel shortly before 6 am and all firefighters on duty in the capital region were called to the scene, Morgunbladid reports.
The hotel had to be evacuated and guests, many of whom were either lightly dressed or wrapped in their comforters, stood outside while the firefighters were in action.
“The Reykjavík Bus Company arrived with buses so that the people could rest but that was hardly necessary as the weather was great. Then the Red Cross arrived to assist people but everyone was very calm and took it in stride,” Oddur Hallgrímsson, duty officer at the capital region’s fire department, told visir.is.
“There was a fire in an equipment facility in one of the annexes and smoke entered a few rooms,” he described. “It appears that there was a failure in an electric motor which drives the ventilation system and that it caught fire.”
Hallgrímsson said the fire managed to spread to some wood. “It was a fairly large fire but we were able to manage it.”
A fire also started at the aluminum smelter in Straumsvík outside Hafnarfjördur around 6 pm last night. The fire department was alerted but the employees of ISAL managed to put the fire out themselves, as it was minor, visir.is reports.
ESA
