A section of a busy hotel had to be evacuated yesterday after a fire broke out in a bedroom.
The fire, at the Clare Inn Hotel near Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co Clare, was quickly brought under control by fire crews, while hotel staff evacuated patrons from other rooms in the wing.
Staff investigated the source of the fire after the hotel’s automatic fire alarm was activated at around 5.00pm. Emergency services were also automatically alerted to the blaze. Three units of the fire brigade from Shannon town along with gardaí and an ambulance were sent to the scene. The fire was quickly extinguished and prevented from spreading to other rooms. It was not clear last night whether the room was occupied at the time. No one was injured in the incident.
A hotel spokesman confirmed: “We had a small fire in one of the bedrooms but it was confined to that room. No other room on the floor was affected and we expect to have people back in those rooms within the hour.”
The 188-room hotel was formerly run by the Lynch Hotel Group, which went into receivership in January 2011. It was recently bought by the five-star Dromoland Castle hotel in a €2.1 million deal.