After weeks of media requests, the Killeen Fire Department released an unredacted copy of the Hilton Garden Inn fire investigation report to the Herald late Friday which details safety concerns in the days leading up to the massive hotel blaze in mid-February.
The fully occupied four-story Hilton Garden Inn in Killeen erupted into flames on Feb. 19 during the height of the Texas winter storm that left millions without power and water across the Lone Star State. The fire was further complicated by a lack of water pressure from the winter storm power outage. Firefighters from seven agencies battled the fully engulfed building for hours before containing the fire in the early hours of Feb. 20.
None of the occupants of the hotel’s 102 rooms were seriously injured during the fire. However, Chico the chihuahua, a local family pet, was never recovered from the building.
The Hilton Garden Inn is owned by Le Family LLC, according to the most recent record from the Bell County Appraisal District. In 2020, according to appraisal district records, the four-story hotel was valued at $9,215,810 — a 41% increase from the building’s 2019 appraised value.
On Monday, the city of Killeen asked the Texas Attorney General to withhold the Hilton Garden Inn fire investigation report from the Herald, but ultimately opted to release the report Friday afternoon after days of questions from Herald staffers.
The 68-page Hilton Garden Inn fire investigation report includes over 30 fire investigation photos, and multiple witness statements from hotel employees who said the fire suppression system was not functional in the days leading up to the blaze.
According to the report, authored by Capt. Mike Eveans, Hilton hotel manager Tashia Bryce and general manager Cheryl Shibuya told Eveans they noticed problems with the hotel’s fire suppression system the day before the massive fire.
“They stated the fire sprinkler system pipes froze and failed yesterday (Thursday 2/18/21),” the report states.
The Hilton’s maintenance person, Natasha Aimes, told Eveans “she believed the spinkler pipes burst due to being frozen on Wednesday (2/17/2021) night” and that she “turned the fire sprinkler riser off to stop the water from flooding the lobby.”
Aimes said she believed the pipes “only broke above the lobby area” and that she was “unaware” of any other reports of water flowing anywhere else in the hotel.
Property manager Sam Patel told Eveans he visited the property earlier in the day after a fire alarm went off that Friday morning.
“When asked about the fire alarm at approximately 10:13 a.m., he stated he received a call from the monitoring company,” according to the report. “He stated he walked the halls with housekeeping and did not smell any smoke. He stated the fire alarm did not go off to his knowledge.”
Patel told Eveans “he canceled the incoming fire engine” that morning and that “the front desk staff frequently sets the fire alarm panel to silent due to false alarms.”
Patel stated “the fire alarm would routinely go off for no reason” and that he “tried multiple times to get A-1 (Fire and Safety) to come and repair it, but they did not.”
Employees at A-1 Fire and Safety — which services fire alarms, sprinkler systems, and monitors fire alarm systems — told Eveans “they never received a call for service to repair the sprinkler system” and that “they were not aware of any issue with the fire alarm panel.”
The fire alarm panel was last inspected in March 2020, according to the report. However, the report cites the alarm company “stated the red tag was rescinded due to the construction company doing the renovations having new heads to install.”
According to the report, the fire started “in or near the west side of the attic.”
Patel told Eveans “the owner was the only person who ever entered the attic.”
The hotel owner, Viu Le, told Eveans he was in the attic that Friday afternoon “for approximately 30 minutes” to add “a step to the ladder.”
Viu Le told Eveans “he was in the attic on the day of the fire at approximately 4-5 p.m.,” according to the report. “He stated he did not know what could have caused the fire in the attic.”
Eveans interviewed people staying on the fourth floor of the hotel who all had “a very similar recollection of the events prior to the fire,” according to the report.
“Some of the people recalled hearing a quick chirp, but not a full-on fire alarm, just prior to discovering smoke,” the report states.
The cause of the structure fire, according to the report, “was undetermined due to material loss from fire damage of the attic, and safety concerns of floor collapse.”
The property, and what evidence remains from the structure fire, may soon be erased from the city landscape.
A Jamco Construction worker who fenced in the property told the Herald in March the building is expected to be torn down.
attorney general
It took nearly three weeks of questioning and a city of Killeen request to the Texas Attorney General, before the city or the Killeen Fire Department turned over the hotel’s fire report to the Herald.
On April 5, the Herald requested a copy of the fire investigation report from city of Killeen spokeswoman Hilary Shine.
On April 7, Eveans confirmed the fire marshal’s investigation into the hotel fire was complete, but was unable to release an official report to the Herald as it was turned over to the records department.
According to an April 19 letter, signed by paralegal Elizabeth Lara, the city of Killeen was seeking a decision from the Texas Attorney General about the requested report claiming “the report is not subject to disclosure pursuant to the law enforcement exception of the Public Information Act.”
The letter stated “the fire marshal’s investigation did not result in deferred adjudication or conviction; therefore, the report should be withheld.”
The Herald’s stance was that the fire investigation report is a public record of interest to over a hundred people who were staying at the hotel the evening of Feb. 19, people who subsequently lost personal items, and in one case, a family pet, in the fire.
Fire Marshal James Chism told the Herald Wednesday, prior to the report’s release, that it is not uncommon for a fire investigation report to be withheld from the public.
Chism explained there are three types of rulings in fire investigation reports: accidental, incendiary, and undetermined.
If a fire investigator cannot swear under oath that he or she can prove, with 100 percent certainty, that a fire was accidental or incendiary in nature, then it must be ruled undetermined, Chism said.
If the fire is accidental, generally, he said, a report would be released “no questions asked.”
The determination to release a report to the public is often the decision of the fire chief or the fire investigator on the case, he said.
“As a general rule, most of the time, undetermined fire (reports) are not released because there could be information that comes to light and now you’ve given everything out,” he said.
Chism said the Hilton Garden Inn fire “is not being investigated as a suspicious fire.”
Debbie Hargreaves told the Herald Thursday she and her family are finally reaching a new normal after a frozen pipe from the winter storm flooded their home, and the family found themselves the unfortunate evacuees of one of the largest hotel fires in Killeen history.
Hargreaves, her elderly parents, and brother were staying on the third floor of the Hilton Garden Inn on the night of the fire after they evacuated their Killeen home days before during the winter storm. Read more here: https://bit.ly/2Pfqyks.
In an interview with the Herald Thursday, Hargreaves said she wanted the report to be released to the public.
“Everybody needs to be transparent, including the fire department, or whoever is withholding it,” Hargreaves said.
Hargreaves said she has lingering suspicions that there was electrical damage in the building in the days leading up to the massive fire.
“I really think it (the problem) was electrical,” she said. “Because we had problems with the heater in the room. It kept getting hotter and hotter and it wouldn’t shut off. Then, they had somebody come up and look at it, but they didn’t really do much. Then, there were the fire alarms.”
Fire alarms sounded during the days leading up to the fire, she said, and would be quickly turned off as if they were false alarms. The day of the fire, the fire alarms went off once more and were seemingly manually turned off again, she said. But the night of the fire, as the hotel burned, fire alarms never sounded, she said.
“I have my suspicions,” she said. “They had signs that things were faulty before, like they weren’t keeping up with maintaining and keeping it up to standards or whatever.”
FIRE CHIEF
Killeen Fire Department Chief James Kubinski told the Herald Friday afternoon that “there was no intention to withhold or to not be open to the media” adding that he wanted to have a “great relationship” with the media.
The chief echoed Chism’s statements that the report was withheld because of the undetermined cause of the fire.
“Again, due to the undetermined cause, when a fire is undetermined, that means we can’t determine with a 100 percent certainty that it’s accidental or not accidental — all the evidence in the area of origin was destroyed — so when it’s undetermined, unable to be determined, we try to maintain as much confidentiality with that as we can in the event a future investigation is needed.”
After five days of media requests, Kubinski told the Herald Friday afternoon he would release the report Saturday morning “if not sooner.” The report was emailed to a Herald staffer at 4 p.m. Friday afternoon, just before the close of the business day.
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