IN A legal case at Dumbarton Sheriff Court, the fire at Cameron House Resort in December 2017 was revealed to have been started by ash and embers being left in a cupboard in a plastic bag.
Earlier this week, it was reported that the company that owns the Scottish hotel will face charges under the Fire (Scotland) Act after two men died in a fire there in December 2017. The fire at the hotel in Loch Lomond caused the deaths of guests Simon Midgley and Richard Dyson, with the hotel destroyed and over 200 other people managing to escape during a ‘massive rescue operation’ by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS).
The case against the hotel began at the court earlier this week, and at the time it was said that ‘full details of the cause of the blaze will be aired publicly’, with its owners charged with a ‘failure to take fire safety measures’, putting people ‘at risk of/death serious injury’ and a failure of the person in control ‘to take fire safety measures’. Should a guilty plea be entered and accepted by the court, the owners face a ‘massive’ fine.
In turn, a possible fatal accident inquiry ‘has not been ruled out’ by prosecutors, with survivors of the fire and relatives of Mr Midgley and Mr Dyson ‘expected to raise private actions for damages’. The case is set to be heard ‘less than a fortnight’ after the cost of repairs to the hotel were announced to be ‘at least’ £26m, with the ‘majority’ covered by insurers, and the hotel hopes to be open for business in April after work was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
BBC News has now reported on the court proceedings, which revealed that hotel porter Christopher O’Malley ‘put a bag of ash and embers in a cupboard containing kindling and newspaper’. The hotel pleaded guilty to the charges made against it relating to failing to take fire safety measures, and Mr O’Malley admitted breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act, with his lawyer commenting that the porter ‘deeply regretted his actions, and did not deliberately start the fire’.
The court also heard that the hotel ‘did not have proper procedures in place for the disposal of ash, or for training staff’, while the owners ‘also failed to keep cupboards that contained potential ignition sources free of combustibles’. At 4am on the morning of the fire, Mr O’Malley cleared ash and embers from a fireplace at the reception into a bucket, before emptying the contents into a plastic bag and putting this in the concierge cupboard.
However, the cupboard ‘also contained flammable materials including kindling, newspapers and cardboard’, and two and a half hours later a fire alarm sounded, with staff noticing smoke coming from the cupboard. Mr O’Malley opened it and the flames ‘took hold, spreading to the hall’, and despite he and two other staff members’ attempts to fight the fire with extinguishers, they were ‘overcome’ by the flames.
At court, Crown QC Michael Meehan said that the cupboard was ‘well alight’ and that the blaze ‘immediately took hold and spread from there’, with the night manager sounding the full alarm and calling 999. SFRS firefighters arrived within 10 minutes but found a ‘well developed’ fire. One family of three on the second floor needed rescuing by firefighters, while a couple on the first floor ‘had to crawl to safety’ as corridors and fire escape pathways ‘were filling with smoke and gases’.
After 8am, Mr Dyson and Mr Midgley were discovered to be missing, with firefighters finding Mr Dyson ‘on a landing at the top of a staircase’ and Mr Midgley in a fire escape passageway – Mr Midgley was pronounced dead at the scene, while Mr Dyson was taken to hospital but was later pronounced dead. Both men were found to have died due to smoke and gas inhalation.
The court also heard of an incident three nights previously, where Mr O’Malley and another night porter ‘were told not to put plastic bags containing ash into the concierge cupboard’. The hotel’s QC Peter Gray said it was ‘extremely difficult to understand’ why Mr O’Malley ‘did not follow this guidance on the night of the fire’, while the court also heard that staff ‘were not properly trained in the safe disposal of ash’, with ‘no written procedures […] in place’.
In turn, there was also ‘no procedure in place for emptying the metal ash bins outside the hotel on a regular basis’, which was ‘contrary to recommendations made’ in two fire risk assessments the hotel underwent in 2016 and 2017. After the first was received in January 2016, the hotel manager agreed ‘there was a lack of a formal procedure for disposing of ash’, and delegated responsibility for this to his deputy – when raised again in the second report in 2017, the manager said ‘it had been dealt with’.
Mr Gray said that the manager ‘understood incorrectly that all the actions had been completed, including in relation to the written procedure for disposing of ash from open fires’, while SFRS were revealed to have warned hotel management about ‘the risks of storing combustibles in the concierge cupboard’ in August 2017. A fire safety audit it had undertaken ‘highlighted the potential danger of fire spreading rapidly through the building’ due to its age and voids.
A follow up letter from SFRS was sent to management in November 2017, but combustibles ‘continued to be stored in the cupboard’, with BBC News noting that the details of the fire were first revealed in court in December, but ‘reporting restrictions meant they could not be published until now’, with sentencing due to take place next week.