Two-alarm fire rekindles at downtown hotel

SAN ANTONIO (KTSA News) – More than 2 dozen fire units  responded to a 2-alarm blaze early Wednesday at a River Walk pub and downtown hotel.

Woody Woodward with the San Antonio Fire Department says it started around 5 a.m. in the kitchen at Waxy O’Connor’s Irish Pub on the River Walk and spread to the adjacent Mokara Hotel and Spa.  The facade of the hotel is on Crockett Street between N. St. Mary’s and Navarro.

Mokara Hotel and Spa-San Antonio/KTSA Photo-Elizabeth Ruiz

“The fire started in the kitchen and went up a vented hood and went up the vent through several floors of the hotel with a lot of smoke,” said Woodward.

Hotel General Manager John “Rusty” Wallace told KTSA News there were 63 guests and all evacuated safely.  They were transferred to the nearby La Mansion Hotel, which also is a property of Omni Hotels and Resorts.

Waxy O’Connor’s Irish Pub Fire/KTSA Photo-Elizabeth Ruiz

Woodward says initially, there was some concern that a woman may have been overcome by smoke, but she was checked out by EMS and seemed to be okay.

“Luckily, in this situation,  it was not an active fire going up through the hotel floors, but just smoke going up through the vent and some fire up to the second or  third floor level,” said Woodward.

Around 8:30 a.m., crews were called back to the hotel when the fire flared up again between the second and third floors, but that was quickly extinguished.

The smoke also spread to an office building next door which has some apartments on the top floor, but everyone evacuated safely, including a woman and her pets.

 

 

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SAN ANTONiO (KTSA News)- More than sixty guests evacuated the Mokara Hotel when a 2-alarm fire erupted around 5 Wednesday morning.

Woody Woodward with the San Antonio Fire Department says it started at Waxy O’Connor’s, which shares a wall with the Mokara, and traveled up an adjoining wall. He says there was some charring of some of the hotel rooms and firefighters remain on the scene, making sure the smoke doesn’t continue traveling up the 8-story hotel.

Displaced guests were taken to the nearby La Mansion Hotel, which also is an Omni property.

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