A New Year We'll Never Forget

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For the past few months, Teamsters Local 901 and the hotel, which is owned by Hotel Systems International, of Santa Monica, Calif., had been holding negotiations for a new contract. The union, which represents 290 of the hotel's 450 employees, had threatened to strike at midnight on Dec. 31 if its demands were not met. On the afternoon of the last day of the year, 200 or so union members met in the Dupont Plaza's ballroom for more than an hour and voted to allow their leaders to call a strike. "The next we know," claimed Attorney Rudy Torruella, the hotel's negotiator, "is that immediately a fire broke out in the ballroom. In attempts to put out the fire by going through the kitchen door to the ballroom, ((hotel employees)) found that a door was barred, barricaded from the inside." Nonetheless, Torruella refused to speculate about who might have started the blaze. "I would prefer to speak just of facts. The fact is that the fire broke out in the ballroom."

Union officials angrily denied any role in the disaster. Jose Cadiz, Local 901's secretary and treasurer, pointed out that at least three union members had perished and offered a $15,000 reward for information leading to the capture of arsonists, if indeed arson was involved. Though he acknowledged there had been tensions between union workers and the hotel, that was putting it mildly: since late December, the union had been airing spots on local radio stations urging people to stay away from the Dupont Plaza on New Year's Eve. Cadiz explained that the ads referred merely to a possible curtailment in services at the hotel. He also said that after the ballroom meeting ended, he remained confident that an agreement would be reached by midnight.

Most investigators agreed that the conflagration began in the ballroom under the mezzanine-level lobby and that subsequent blasts, perhaps caused when the fire hit kitchen gas lines, propelled the flames up into the casino. There were unconfirmed reports that three explosive devices had been found. And in the days preceding the tragedy, several small suspicious fires had broken out.

Arson or accident, survivors complained bitterly about how the hotel had responded. According to eyewitnesses, no alarms were sounded and no public- address announcements were made. Survivors were also unhappy with evacuation procedures that were confused or nonexistent. Others said the gaming hall's manager had shut the casino's doors when smoke first wafted into the room. But Croupier David Corrasquillo argued that his boss had the doors closed to keep out smoke, not to keep in money. The manager, Santiago Torres, died in the blaze.

The Dupont Plaza had no sprinkler system; it is not required under local law. Puerto Rico is hardly alone in its failure to insist on the devices. In the U.S., guidelines vary greatly from city to city; Nevada, Florida and Massachusetts are the only states that make installation in all hotels mandatory. Governor Hernandez Colon has now promised to seek a law directing the island's hotels to install sprinklers.