Guests who were visiting the Gallup area and staying at the El Rancho Hotel over the holidays were evacuated from the hotel Dec. 28 due to a carbon monoxide leak.
According to a Gallup Fire Department incident report, a woman staying at the hotel called Metro Dispatch around 6 pm and said she wasn’t feeling OK. She reportedly said her husband had passed out. She said they were staying in a room on the hotel’s third floor.
When GFD personnel arrived at the scene, the man had awoken, but both people said they did not feel well.
According to the report, the first responders’ carbon monoxide monitors immediately began going off when they entered the couples’ room.
First responders reportedly saw high carbon monoxide readings on the hotel’s entire third floor, so they initially led everyone on that floor out of the hotel. No other hotel guests reported feeling sick.
Once everyone was evacuated from the third floor GFD personnel began ventilating the third floor. They also gathered carbon monoxide readings from throughout the hotel.
In an email to the Sun, Nicholas Shults, the CEO of Ortega Hospitality, the company that operates the El Rancho, said the cause of the gas leak was identified as a blockage in the hotel’s ventilation system.
He said the problem was detected about two hours after it began.
Initially, only guests from the hotel’s third floor were evacuated, but the hotel staff did eventually clear everyone out from the hotel. Shulte said the entire evacuation process took about 30 minutes.
After the GFD responded to the scene a gas company was called in. Shulte said the issue was resolved in 48 hours, and after a gas company came in and fixed the problem, hotel staff monitored the carbon monoxide levels for another 48 hours.
In response to the situation, Shulte said the hotel has upgraded its ventilation system and installed carbon monoxide detectors to enhance safety.
