A “management failing” appears to have led to the tragic deaths of two guests at Cameron House Hotel, an inquiry has heard.
Resort director Andy Roger gave evidence at Fatal Accident Inquiry into the deaths of Simon Midgley, 32, and Richard Dyson, 38.
The couple died on December 18, 2017 after a blaze – caused by a night porter disposing ash in a cupboard – swept through the five-star hotel on the banks of Loch Lomond.
More than 200 guests were evacuated after the alarm was raised at around 6.30am.
The inquiry at Paisley Sheriff Court has previously been told how there was no written procedure instructing staff how to empty ash from the building’s open fires – despite fire risk assessors recommending there should have been.
The inquiry has heard workers were ‘left to their own devices’, using various receptacles from ice buckets to chafer dishes to collect ash.
Night porter Christopher O’Malley, from Renton, was sentenced to a community payback order last year after causing the blaze by emptying ash and embers into a plastic bag and then put it in a cupboard of kindling and newspapers.
Hotel operator Cameron House Resort (Loch Lomond) Ltd was fined £500,000, after admitting 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.
Addressing Mr Roger, Mark Stewart QC, acting for O’Malley, said the “absence” of a standard operating procedure “left at large staff, who had not been properly trained, to their own devices” in how they cleaned the fireplaces.
Mr Roger told the inquiry: “I would say I don’t disagree with the comment about the document and training, but wouldn’t say they were left to their own devices.”
The QC then said: “I’m not trying to lay the blame at you personally but there seems to have been a management failing at some point in the chain that has led to tragedy.”
Mr Roger said he was not aware night porters, who were responsible for clearing ash from the previous day, were using various equipment and said he would have put a procedure in place “urgently” if he had known it hadn’t been done.
The director said he believed the task had been carried out as the action plan prepared by assessors Veteran Fire Safety had later been annotated as complete.
The inquiry has heard that the head chef did prepare a written procedure for the cleaning of oven ash, but that a policy for open fires was not carried out.
Mr Roger said this task was delegated to former deputy general manager Sebastian Pinn who has told the court he couldn’t remember why he didn’t arrange for a policy to be prepared.
Mr Roger also told the inquiry that the hotel did not do fire drills at night, and when asked by Sheriff Thomas McCartney what time they were held, he said: “We generally took them around 10.30 to 11 in the morning or three or four in the afternoon. Between 10 and four, generally, the hours of the drills.”
Questioned by Advocate Depute Graeme Jessop, about roll-play drills after hours, Mr Roger said: “That was not something we did, in hindsight, that’s something we have done differently, we have done silent drills since we re-opened to capture that.”
As part of the evacuation plan, workers were instructed to pick up a bag which included equipment to help with the roll-call of guests. However, night manager Darren Robinson left it behind.
Mr Roger was asked by the Mr Jessop if there was any back-up.
“A duplicate of equipment? Not that I can recall,” he told the court, before adding many of its systems were cloud-based and could be accessed from a laptop.
On the morning of the fire, Mr Roger told the court, he arrived at the hotel by about 7.15am and spoke to emergency services.
He then made his way to the Boat House with the guest list, after it had been retrieved from the burning building by a firefighter, and said staff had already started a manual roll call.
Mr Roger said he assisted by cross referencing the two.
He said at the Boat House there were “people coming in and out” and staff were calling between the two main rooms.
“A small number of rooms after the manual check we hadn’t confirmation on,” he told the inquiry.
It was discovered the guests in room eight, Mr Dyson and Mr Midgley, were unaccounted for some time after 8am – around an hour-and-a-half after the alarm.
The inquiry has also heard how James Clark, a fire inspector at the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, had inspected the property in the summer of 2017 and told management to remove combustibles from the concierge cupboard where the fire started.
Subsequently, in an email sent to staff, general manager Craig Paton wrote: “Can you make safe and speak to team? Highlighted previously by fire safety inspector and evidently still an issue.”
Alan Grimes, 54, was head concierge at the hotel at the time of the blaze and told the inquiry he couldn’t remember seeing the email but would have done as requested.
He said newspapers had historically been kept in the cupboard but that stopped after the fire service raised the issue, saying: “If there was anything there I would have moved it.”
The inquiry has heard there was kindling and newspapers stored in the cupboard at the time of the blaze.
Since the hotel re-opened in September 2021, the inquiry was told, there have been revised fire safety procedures and new fire safety measures including sprinklers and updated alarms.
The inquiry continues.
