A fire outside a hotel forced the early Saturday morning evacuation of the Extended Stay America near the Indianapolis airport.

Guests woke up to a fire alarm, smoke and sprinklers. Many people and their wet stuff are looking for somewhere else to stay tonight.

The Wayne Township Fire Department thinks someone discarded a cigarette butt in the bushes outside the hotel that started a fire that displaced some 200 people staying at the hotel.

“I was laying in the bed and the smoke was coming in the window,” said Scott Beckham, a construction worker from Florida who has lived at the hotel for about two months. “Then the alarms went off and they told everybody to evacuate.”

Firefighters quickly knocked down the flames, but not before the fire leaped into the attic and set off the sprinklers.

“I never really felt super in danger once firefighter staff and stuff got here,” said hotel guest Autumn Heidenthal.

No guests were injured but the building suffered extensive damage, including standing water in several hallways and rooms. 

“Just smoky and everything,” said Beckham, whose room is right above where the fire started. “The ceiling fell down in my room from the water damage.”

Heidenthal has lived at the hotel for a couple months during a summer internship. Her PT Cruiser was parked right by the fire and was covered in dusty debris. Most of that was washed away when she returned to the hotel after a car wash.

“I’m really lucky my car still runs, still drives,” said Heidenthal. “It just needed a little bit of a cleanup. That’s just about the bulk of it. At first, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh! Did my car start the fire?’ because where the flames were from my angle it looked like it was right by my car.”

Heidenthal doesn’t smoke cigarettes and she was asleep in her room when someone’s cigarette apparently ignited a burning bush.

102 of the 105 rooms at the Extended Stay America were occupied, some by people in town for Gen Con. The American Red Cross of Indiana was on hand to provide shelter if needed.