It was a frightening morning for guests at a downtown hotel.
Parents at the Residence Inn Downtown Atlanta hotel couldn’t wake up their children and had no idea why. It turns out they all had been exposed to carbon monoxide and the entire hotel had to be evacuated.
“There was just an alarm,” one evacuee told Channel 2′s Tom Jones about what woke her up.
Some guests say they were asleep when they heard a fire alarm just before 9:00 a.m. Friday morning.
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“I was like, ‘Oh shoot.’ She was like, ‘Just leave our stuff.’ I was like, ‘Absolutely not. Like we are taking it and getting out,’” one guest said.
Several guests say they had to take the stairs to get out of the hotel. Jim Hoag from Texas says he had no problem getting from the ninth floor, but he says he saw a man in a wheelchair who was struggling.
“He got down, I think, 10 flights of stairs before somebody could come help him. His family helped him,” he said.
Firefighters say it all began when guests in one room couldn’t wake up their children.