Elyria Fire Chief: Hotel fire investigation could take up to a year

It has been almost a month since a nearly finished hotel in Elyria caught fire and sustained extensive damage, but it could be several months or up to even a year before the public knows the details of the blaze. Elyria Fire Chief Joe Vargo told Elyria City Council last week that the fire at the Home2Suites by Hilton near the Midway Mall is still under active investigation by the Ohio State Fire Marshal as well as by insurance investigators representing more than 30 contractors and subcontractors that worked on the project. During Council's regular meeting Sept. 8, Councilwoman Brenda Davis, D-2nd Ward, asked Vargo if he could provide any new information on the blaze that destroyed the hotel in her ward as it raged for over 12 hours. Davis said she fielded questions nearly every day about the fire. Vargo said that the state fire marshal's office was investigating to determine whether the cause was a civil or criminal matter. Additionally, he said that insurance companies representing dozens of contractors that had worked on the project were also entitled to investigate, making the process even longer. "What that means is there are a lot of people involved, and what we are being told is this (investigation) can be extended over an extensive period of time," Vargo said. "As early as three months, as long as a year, as they start to sort through all these contractors and try to tear down the building and find some answers. Really where this sits is whether it is civil or criminal at this time, and there is no outcome as of yet, ma'am. I wish I had more information, I would give it to you if I did, but unfortunately I do not." Additionally, Vargo said that the building could not be fully torn down until the investigations are complete. During the more than 12-hour response to the fire, crews were forced to tear open walls and pull down a significant portion of the structure's eastern facade to get access to the seat of the fire and extinguish it. "What will happen is they will go in sections because they want to make sure they are gathering the appropriate evidence," he said. "They were recently able to get an engineer into the structure to secure it, to make sure it was safe for investigators to go in. Once they've done that, they will begin to take down parts of the structure in order to determine a cause and origin (of the fire)." In the hours and days after the fire, some residents and outsiders publicly speculated that the blaze may have been intentionally set. Mayor Kevin Brubaker had responded on his Facebook page by calling on residents not to speculate about the fire and to instead rally around the owner of the hotel, Sunrise Hospitality. Councilman Kenny Oswald, D-4th Ward, also addressed similar comments at the meeting last Tuesday, apologizing to Sunrise co-owner Jivan Patel and his family. "The comments I was getting on Facebook were unbelievable, I want to just turn around and smack people for making comments," Oswald said. "These people put their life into this building and all of a sudden it has a fire, and they (commenters) want to say already 'Oh it was arson and they did it,' I got so tired of hearing that. That was disgusting. That's our residents that are making those comments, and to the Patel family, I apologize for what they have had to go through with this." Councilman Andrew Lipian, I-1st Ward, seconded Oswald's anger, saying the comments reminded him of accusations that followed the 2021 fire that destroyed the building of the former Uncle Vic's night club. "It wasn't right then and it's not right now. Thanks for saying that," Lipian said. Sunrise owns two operating hotels, a Courtyard by Marriott and Hampton Inn and Suites hotels, next to the property of the Home2Suites and Tru2 by Hilton, which had been set to open in November. The Fremont, Ohio-based company has promised that it will rebuild the hotel that it originally broke ground on in September 2024. Contact Owen MacMillan at 440-329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.