Fire gutted five rooms of a Route 6 hotel early Monday, forcing one guest to leap to safety and sending others fleeing into the night.
Investigators said they believe the 12:01 a.m. blaze at the Hillside Inn was intentionally set by a man staying in one of the burned-out rooms, and they are close to filing charges against him.
"No arrest has been made at this time, however, we expect to have enough to apply for an arrest warrant soon," said Bethel police Detective Sgt. James Wright.
Neither police nor hotel staff would identify the suspected arsonist, but manager Samir Patel said the man had been taken to Danbury Hospital. No one else required medical treatment.
Stony Hill Fire Chief Jim Belot credited quick work by firefighters with keeping the fire from spreading.
"During my many years as a firefighter, this will go down as one of the quickest fire stops that I and many of my fellow firefighters have witnessed," he said.
The inn, owned by the Patel family for the past 20 years, consists of three separate structures with a total of 48 rooms. The fire started in a second-floor room of one of the annex buildings.
Belot said a female guest, who wasn't identified, escaped the flames by jumping from the second-story balcony to the roof of an adjoining building. She was evacuated to a safe area and refused medical treatment, he said.
Initial reports indicated another guest may have been trapped, but those proved to be unfounded. All the occupants were evacuated and accounted for, Belot said.
Hotel guest Don Hamel said he was asleep when he was awakened by patrons of a restaurant located across Route 6 who were pounding on his door.
"They said there was a fire. I didn't believe them. I thought they were drunk," said Hamel, who, along with his brother, has been staying at the inn for the past two weeks while working at a construction site in Ridgefield.
But after they convinced him to look up, Hamel saw the flames and smoke shooting into the air. He alerted his brother, then grabbed his camera.
"It was odd, but my first reaction was to take a picture," he said. Firefighters and police arrived moments later and moved the evacuated guests a safe distance from the blaze, Hamel said.
From the street, the building appeared undamaged Monday afternoon, save for yellow crime scene tape surrounding it.
But from the rear parking lot, the view was completely different. The entire second-floor appeared gutted, with the gray, vinyl siding melted by the heat and the wood beneath it blackened by the flames.
The parking area was filled with insulation and other rubble ripped from the burned-out rooms. Five rooms on the second floor were completely gutted. Four others located beneath them sustained only water damage, Belot said.
Belot said flames were shooting 10 to 20 feet i n the air when units from the Stony Hill, Bethel and Hawleyville fire departments responded, along with Engine 24 from Danbury and EMS units from Stony Hill, Newtown and Danbury.
