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4 die in California hotel fire
SAN BERNARDINO, California (CNN) -- Four people died Saturday and 18 were injured, two of them critically, in an early morning blaze that swept through a downtown transient hotel, a fire official at the scene told CNN. Three of the dead -- all adults -- succumbed to smoke inhalation and the fourth, the hotel's manager, died of burns, said Mike Alder, San Bernardino City Fire Dept. battalion chief. The injured were transported to hospitals, Alder said. At least 94 people, including several babies and children, were in the three-story Sunset Hotel when the fire broke out sometime after midnight, he said. Eighty firefighters rescued about 30 people -- among them a 2-month-old infant -- by aerial ladders. No children were among the injured, the fire official said. Alder said when firefighters arrived at the hotel "20 to 25 people were hanging out of windows on the hotel's third floor." "We had the fire under control in about 40, 45 minutes," he said. Second floor resident Paul Dunfee said he was asleep when he was awakened by someone banging on his door, telling him there was a fire. He and many other second floor residents escaped down stairwells. "It was like a total wall of smoke the minute you opened the fire doors," a resident said. Investigators believe the fire started in a large trashcan on the third floor's elevator lobby, based partly on past experiences with the hotel and also because the hotel manager's badly burned body was found in that area. When the fire began, the manager took the elevator to the third floor which was "the worst thing he could have done," Alder said. The fire official said Saturday's blaze was the fourth reported trash-can fire at the hotel in the "last couple of months." The other fires were put out without incident. "Unfortunately, we didn't get to this in time," Alder said. The center-hall construction of the hotel and its lack of sprinkler systems contributed to making it a "death trap" and "the worst nightmare for firefighters," Alder said. The fire gutted the wood and stucco structure's third floor but from the outside the rest of the hotel appeared intact, a firefighter told CNN. The Red Cross has provided shelter for 73 of the hotel's occupants at an area high school. The hotel was built in the mid-1960s and caters to a low-income clientele, a fire official said. They may stay for "days or weeks at a time." San Bernardino is 50 miles east of Los Angeles and has a population of close to 200,000.
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