The council’s chief executive, Susan Priest, said: “The extent of support of organisations, including Three Hills, Morrisons and the Salvation Army, has been amazing and helped to ensure that visitors and residents were looked after, supported and had food and hot drinks.
“This was an extremely difficult day, firstly for the hotel guests and this evening for our residents who have had to move out of their homes.”
Ross Honeycomb, 39, was staying at the hotel with his family and told the on Saturday how they were woken by fire alarms at about 01:00.
He said: “I thought I was dreaming, it was horrifying.
“We looked out and there was smoke billowing from the underground car park. Later we started hearing explosions.”
Kevin Crawford, 91, and his wife Kathleen, 82, said they had booked in for a two-week stay at the hotel.
The couple, from London, told the that they were in their room on the sixth floor when they heard a fire alarm.
“We saw the fire but we thought the fire brigade had it under control,” said Kevin.
“We managed to sleep through it. At the time, we didn’t realise how bad the fire was.”
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