A Cameron House night manager was left “horrified” after watching a porter use a plastic bag to clear out a fireplace – days before the practice caused a fatal blaze which killed two guests.
Ann Rundell yesterday told an inquiry she challenged the staff member, asking ‘what the f*** do you think you’re doing?’
The 61-year-old was giving evidence in the second week of a Fatal Accident Inquiry at Paisley Sheriff Court into the deaths of Richard Dyson, 38, and his partner Simon Midgley, 32, who died following the fire at the five-star Loch Lomond hotel in December 2017. It started after Renton night porter Christopher O’Malley emptied ash and embers from a log fire into a polythene bag, and then put it in a cupboard of kindling and newspapers.
Ms Rundell, who started working at the hotel in 1993 before leaving and returning in 1996, told how she was on shift in the early hours of Friday morning – three days before the blaze – when she spotted the night porter with a plastic bag filled with water.
It was her last shift before the fire on December 18, 2017.
She said O’Malley was “within earshot” when she spoke to the other porter about it at around 1.30am.
“I was standing at reception doing computer work and I saw [him] with a bin bag. It was just a clear bag with water in it,” she told the inquiry.
“I just remember walking up to him and saying ‘what the f*** do you think you’re doing?’
“He was going to put the hot ash into the bag.”
Crown counsel Graeme Jessop asked what his reply was, to which she said: “He said well I can’t find a metal bucket. I said ‘well get a chafing dish from the kitchen, what you usually do.
“I remember him saying to me ‘okay boss, sorry boss’.”
When asked how it made her feel, she replied: “I was horrified.”
The court was shown CCTV footage of the moment the exchange happened.
The porter was seen holding the plastic bag, with Ms Rundell telling the court it appeared to have ash in it.
She told how an incident had happened around 10 years earlier, where a porter had put hot ash into a cardboard box, which set a compactor on fire.
The inquiry has previously heard that ash bins at the back of the hotel were full at the time of the blaze.
Mr Jessop asked: “In the event that the ash bins were full what would you expect the night porters to do?”
She replied: “I would expect the night porter to leave the chafing dish beside the metal bin outside as I wouldn’t want the smoke or anything inside the hotel.
“It’s just common sense to take hot ash outside.”
She said training on the clearing out of fireplaces was done “peer to peer”, with instruction given by an “experienced” night porter.
When asked about how she would respond to a fire in the hotel, Ms Rundell became emotional when talking about the in-house guest list, saying she would always carry a copy with her.
She said: “There was one kept behind the door at reception. I had a clip board and I kept the list with me. I used it all the time. Every shift I was on. I had two copies.”
She said in the event of an evacuation, she would hand it to “whoever comes to me first”, saying: “I would hand it over to a public area cleaner and say go and do the roll call. They would go outside and do it straight away on my instruction.”
When asked to clarify who she would hand the list to, she said: “Whoever comes to me first. If a member of the breakfast team comes to assist I’d hand that out as quickly as you can.”
Ms Rundell was asked whether she received any training for fire evacuations, replying: “Not on nights. There wasn’t a practical fire evacuation at night.”
Last week, the inquiry heard firefighters could have reached Mr Midgley and Mr Dyson more quickly if they knew they were missing.
The inquiry heard from Russell Mackay, 58, a retired watch commander at the Dumbarton station, whose crew changed their strategy as soon as they “knew there were causalities missing”.
The firefighters did not know Mr Midgley and Mr Dyson were unaccounted for when they first went into the hotel, he said.
Mr Mackay said: “If we had found out the number of persons and where they were reported to be at that time, then we could have got to them quicker.”
The alarm was raised at around 6.30am, with the inquiry hearing the two men were discovered to be missing at around 8am.
The inquiry has previously heard evidence from night manager Darren Robinson who left the burning hotel without the guest list.
It was later obtained by Graham Atwell, a retired watch commander at Balloch Fire Station, who also spoke at the inquiry last week.
He was among the first firefighters to arrive at the 128-room hotel.
Mr Atwell said he spoke to the hotel’s duty manager on arrival.
The former commander, who had about 35 years of firefighting experience before retiring, told the inquiry: “I don’t specifically remember speaking to him to ask if everybody was out the hotel except the one family we knew of at the window.
“But I recall being happy everyone was out and I believe (the duty manager) was happy that everyone else was out of the hotel.”
Mr Atwell said “prioritising life” was the first instruction always carried out by firefighters at the scene of an incident, and he told the inquiry his team would not have proceeded with firefighting if he had thought there were people trapped.
Following the successful rescue of the family of three, Mr Atwell said he asked the duty manager if a roll call had been carried out.
He told the inquiry he was told the formal process could not progress as the staff did not have a guest list.
Mr Atwell retrieved the guest list from the reception area and a roll call began as guests were taken to the Boat House nearby.
An update to the fire service from Mr Atwell at 7.10am noted that officers were still trying to ascertain if a roll call had been carried out.
By 8.16am, the crew was notified that occupants Mr Midgley and Mr Dyson were unaccounted for.
When asked by the procurator fiscal what made him happy that all bodies were accounted for earlier in the morning, Mr Atwell said: “It was one of the first conversations I would have.
“After the conversation with the duty manager I was quite confident that everybody was out.
“I don’t remember directly asking or whether I was told but I was confident there was no one left.”
Crew commander Andrew Roger told the inquiry he was tasked with searching the building and had been banging on hotel room doors before the deteriorating conditions forced him and his partner to leave.
He said: “The floor was spongey.The integrity of the floor was starting to go.
“The temperature had risen quite sharply.
“It got to the point where it was quite unbearable.”
He said the moment they decided to leave was when his partner “put his foot through a set of stairs”.
Retired Scottish Fire and Rescue Service area commander David Proctor also told the inquiry he decided to withdraw some of the breathing apparatus crews as they could “feel the floors moving underneath their feet”.
In January last year, hotel operator Cameron House Resort (Loch Lomond) Ltd was fined £500,000 and porter Christopher O’Malley was given a community payback order over the fire.
The hotel firm admitted failing to take the necessary fire safety measures to ensure the safety of its guests and employees between January 14 2016 and December 18 2017.
The company admitted two charges of breaching the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005.
O’Malley admitted breaching sections of health and safety laws which relate to the obligation on an employee to take reasonable care for the health and safety of people affected by their acts or omissions at work.
The inquiry before Sheriff Thomas McCartney continues.
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