A New Year We'll Never Forget

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Fire fighters were hindered by the hotel's layout. Its extra-wide mezzanine and its ground floor, which accommodated the ballroom and two restaurants, made it difficult for trucks to get close enough to use their aerial ladders to rescue guests. According to Richard Henderson, a South Carolina chemist and arson expert, many hotels have adopted this design in recent years. "For those on the upper floors," Henderson said, "stairways are about the only shot they've got to get out."

The Dupont Plaza fire is likely to have other, more mundane repercussions. This winter's season was expected to be the best since Puerto Rico's tourist industry went into decline about a decade ago, and the island's officials fear that vacationers will now stay away. "This is the first time we have had such a tragedy," said San Juan Mayor Baltasar Corrada del Rio. "I am sure that ((tourists)) will not allow this sort of thing to have an impact."

Perhaps. But the scenes of blood and bodies and panic will be etched forever in the minds of those who witnessed or survived the horror. As the rescue operation progressed into the night, New Year's Eve celebrators from nearby hotels, wearing party hats that looked strangely forlorn, wandered by the Dupont Plaza. Standing in water from the fire fighters' hoses, they stared at the blackened hotel. The next morning Monsignor Thomas Maisonette came to give the dead the last rites. "It's such a terrible mess in there," he said as he departed. "It is not easy to tell what is debris and what is human remains." And Pat Lo Grasso of Lodi, N.J., who was staying at the hotel, will remember screaming for her children and crying until she found them. "This is a New Year we'll never forget," she said as she headed home.