Hotel / Motel, Hotel / Restaurant Cookeville, TN – Dryer fire at Hampton Inn controlled by sprinkler system; No injuries September 28, 2015 viking210 A small fire in a commercial dryer early this morning at the Hampton Inn hotel on Interstate Drive kept the Cookeville Fire Department busy. The call came in around 6:40 a.m., and fire crews were on the scene until after 9 a.m., Lt. Benton Young said. “At about the same time we got the call, a Cookeville police officer who was refueling at a gas station nearby on Jefferson Avenue noticed smoke coming from the hotel and responded to the location as well,” Lt. Young said. When firefighters arrived on the scene, he said, smoke could be seen coming out the front lobby doors, all the way from the laundry room located farther back inside the building. Guests of the hotel were evacuated while firefighters assessed and responded to the situation. “There was a lot of smoke. We had to use thermal cameras in the laundry room just to see to get to the source,” he said. That source proved to be only one commercial dryer that appeared to have several mop heads drying inside it, firefighters reported. The hotel’s sprinkler system activated when the dryer fire began to smoke, and the blaze was contained to that appliance. After firefighters arrived, they worked quickly to extinguish the blaze. “We didn’t have to put a whole lot of water on it to put it out, maybe 15 or 20 gallons,” Lt. Young said. The tasks that followed, however, included resetting the fire alarm system, getting the abundance of smoke dissipated from the building and verifying that all of the hotel occupants were evacuated and accounted for. All four Cookeville stations responded to the scene. No one was reported injured in the incident. Capt. Matt White said he expected the business to reopen later this morning following the incident.
