For the second time in one week a hotel in Holbrook has been consumed by fire. The blaze reportedly began at approximately 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, May 20, at the Magnuson Hotel, a two-story, 54-room hotel built in 1963 and renovated in 2012, located at 615 W. Hopi Drive.
Sonia Myer of Minnesota was staying in a ground floor room with her mother and twin eight-month-old babies when she heard a fellow hotel guest pounding on her window. “It took me a couple of minutes to register that she was saying ‘there’s a fire, you need to evacuate,’ and it just didn’t seem real. We never heard any alarms going off.”
Myer grabbed her two children, put them in a pack-and-play and pulled them out of the room where she could see other hotel guests running from their rooms. “Strangers came from across the street and began to help me so we could get out of the area safely.”
Eye witnesses to the fire stated that it began in an abandoned trailer behind the hotel but quickly spread to a tree then an electric pole. When the transformers at the top of the pole blew up the fire spread onto the hotel roof.
According to Holbrook Fire Chief Phillip Rose, crews from Holbrook, Joseph City, Winslow, Sun Valley, Snowflake-Taylor and Timber Mesa responded in an attempt to contain the blaze and keep flames away from nearby buildings. Also assisting with the incident were City of Holbrook Navajo County employees and Arizona Department of Transportation employees.
Rose stated that one firefighter was transported to Little Colorado Medical Center for a heart condition, but later released. The building was totally destroyed.
“Arson investigators and the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) will be here to investigate the fire to determine the cause of the fire,” stated Rose.
The previous Sunday, the Knight’s Inn, a large abandoned hotel on Navajo Blvd., was also consumed by fire but there has been no official determination of the cause of either fire.
