SoHo House Chicago hotel evacuated as CFD puts out ComEd electrical vault fire in West Loop
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago firefighters battled an electrical vault fire Wednesday morning in the West Loop.
The fire broke out around 4:02 a.m. near SoHo House on Green Street near Randolph Street.
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Hotel guests woke up to an announcement over the loud speakers shortly before 6 a.m.
"'This is the Chicago Fire Department. All occupants are asked to evacuate the building,'" hotel guest Michael Worrall said. "It's just madness how close it is to the front of the building... terrifying."
The fire escalated to a level-two hazmat, bringing about 60 firefighters to the scene. The fire was put out minutes later and no one was injured.
The fire department evacuated about 40 people from the six-story SoHo House building because of an electrical fire that started underground.
Heavy flames could be seen shooting up from the vault underground, with firefighters hustling to put it out.
"Probably 30 feet long. It's down under the ground about 15 feet so it's still pretty high coming out of there," CFD 2nd District Chief Robert Jurewicz said.
The vault has been de-energized, but power was knocked out in the area.
This will be quite a memorable business trip for Scott Kadish. He was staying at the Soho House hotel when he was startled awake by the evacuation order.
"It was a huge explosion," Kadish said. "There were flames coming up from the ground, and the billowing smoke through the front of the hotel."
Eventually, Kadish and other hotel guests were allowed back in. He's now headed home to Cincinnati.
"I waited out here in my gym shorts for a couple of hours and they said, 'you can't get in for four hours, and I had to go to work."
However, members of Soho House were not allowed in the building with the hotel guests.
"They said they were not open and to try to check back with them a little later to see if they were open," SoHo House member Alberto Morales said.
Hotel guest Robert Watkins said he heard a loud explosion, then crews came knocking on their hotel room door minutes later to get everybody out.
"There was a loud kind of explosion and it smelled like burned coffee actually, not so much just roasting coffee and then the fire alarm went off," Watkins said. "They went door-to-door, the hotel did a great job getting everybody out. We came out, you could see in the front of the building a huge fire coming out of the manhole on the street, 10 foot high flames, bunch of smoke, a lot of crackling and popping, like small little explosions and they brought us to this side of the street and the fire company showed up."
Comed crews were on the scene trying to figure out what caused their equipment to fail and working to restore power as quickly as they can.
Firefighters are grateful the fire didn't escalate any further.
"It could've gotten inside the building had it not been kept in check by us," Chief Jurewicz said. "But our problem with the electrical vault, if the power still on it's kind of hard for us to put water in there."
It's unclear when all patrons can get back into the hotel. Exactly how the fire started is also under investigation.
