The Watch Hill Fire Department responded to the Ocean House Hotel and Resort at 2 Bluff Avenue at approximately 1:40 PM on Monday afternoon after receiving a fire alarm activation and a 911 call from the hotel reporting a fire in a bedroom on the second sublevel. Watch Hill firefighters arrived within three minutes of the call and reported that the building was being evacuated, that employees were reporting smoke in the hallway near the underground parking garage entrance, and that the Hotel Emergency Response Team had located the fire in one of the beachfront suites and were working to extinguish it. As a precaution, mutual aid was requested from the Westerly Fire Department.

An investigation revealed that the fire started in a malfunctioning radio and had burned the furniture it was on as well as a small section of the wall behind it and the carpet beneath it. The fire was located and extinguished within minutes by the Ocean House Staff and the damage was confined to the radio with slight fire damage to the bureau, the wall, and the carpet as well as light smoke damage throughout the suite. The area was ventilated and the guests were allowed back into the hotel within 25 minutes after the smoke had been cleared from the suite and the hallway.

The Fire Department would like to acknowledge the efforts of the Ocean House Emergency Response Team, which includes members of the Ocean House Management team as well as staff from the Engineering Department, for following their emergency plans and for using their training to quickly and safely evacuate the guests while also locating and extinguishing the fire.

The Fire Department would also like to acknowledge the mutual aid response from the Westerly Fire Department which was instrumental in ensuring that sufficient equipment and firefighters were responding to the scene in the event that the situation had escalated or the fire had spread.

In fact, the Westerly Fire Department was redirected to another call within the Watch Hill Fire District at the Misquamicut Golf Club on Ocean View Highway prior to arriving at the Ocean House to handle a second call for a fire alarm activation that was determined to be accidental.

The total response to both calls included three pumpers, two ladder trucks, and a squad with seventeen firefighters.

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