Legal Question in Consumer Law in Illinois

We were staying a hotel in Illinois and Sometime after 11pm one night the fire alarm went off. Thankfully the people visiting in my room and I were still awake since you could barely hear the alarm. There were three of us mothers in my room with our children and when we heard the alarm we began to evacuate. One of the mothers went to get her two older children who were a few rooms down. When she got to her girls they were frantic since they tried to take the stairs by their room only to not be able to get out on the main level. The door in that stairwell is locked at the first floor since it feeds straight into the management office. The door reads employees only. We were told when we mentioned this that if they had gone down to the lower level (basement level) that they could have gotten outside. Instead in a panic the girls thought they were trapped and ran back up the stairs to the second floor to try to get out. Of our 13 rooms only half of them evacuated or woke up to the fire alarm and only because someone from our group was able to get to them to wake them or they were still up. The alarm was not loud enough to hear it over a television or even the heater. Once we had evacuated to outside we were told that we could just sit in the lobby and wait for them to find out what happened. It was completely against every emergency drill/training process I have ever seen or taught. I am certified in teaching emergency preparedness and this hotel and how they handled the situation was a joke. The desk clerk never left the desk instead the bartender went up to the second floor via the elevator and looked from side to side. She was in view from the balcony the whole time. After that they turned off the alarm and told us all we could go back to our rooms. When some of the parents asked the clerk at the desk what caused the alarm they were given some of the most ridiculous answers. Some of our favorite ones are �A spider must have walked across the wire� and �It was not the pool lights we shut them off our selves.� When parents began asking about the fire department coming to check things out and make sure there was not something like an electrical issue causing this the clerk responded �that they do not call the fire department when the alarm goes off that it cost the hotel too much money.� At this I we were all mortified. The fire department was never notified of the alarm according to the hotel and when asked if they checked the rooms the response was �we only check rooms where no one is.� The hotel and its staff did not follow any type of protocol to protect the guest. The assistant general manager was called in but that is it. No one with training or knowledge of how to detect if there was an unforeseen danger was consulted. The staff did not even try to make sure that the rooms in the area let alone in the hall where the alarm was coming from had been evacuated. When we returned to our room we looked to see if there were smoke detectors in the rooms and there was not one that we saw in any of the rooms. There were sprinkler systems. When speaking with the assistant general manager on Sunday January 2 , 2011 about the issue he told us that if someone had fallen asleep with a cigarette that the sprinkler system would have gone off after being triggered by the alarm in that room. I told him I did not see an alarm in my room and asked him where it was located so I could see it for my own comfort but he never answered that question. When we asked what triggered the alarm the agm told us that it was a false alarm and happens all the time. I asked him point blank �don�t you think if it keeps happening that instead of just shutting it off and ignoring it that maybe you should have someone come in and check it out that is trained to do that sort of thing.� The agm ignored this once again and changed the subject. This hotel is a tragedy waiting to happen. It was a very scary and disheartening moment when sitting there trying to figure out if our hotel was really on fire or not and looking around to see that so many of our group were not with us.

According to the IL fire dept. Fire alarms in hotels are required to be monitored by an outside agency at all times. When the alarm is tripped, the monitoring company will notify the fire department through dispatch. The staff at the hotel should never silence an alarm when the cause is unknown. When the cause is known...for example smoking close to a detector or children playing, the hotel should notify dispatch of this. The fire department will still respond to verify the cause.Any hotel fire alarm system that is not being monitored by an outside agency is in violation of the International Building Code 2006, which has been adopted by the City of Peoria. Is there any legal ramifications.

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