FILE Little America in Salt Lake City Friday, Dec. 26, 2014. Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY — An explosion inside a boiler room at the Little America Hotel sends two workers to the hospital, but, officials say they’re expected to fully recover.
The explosion happened in a residential portion of the hotel on the east side of the complex, next to Main Street. Salt Lake Fire Captain Tony Stowe says two people were doing some work on the boiler when something went wrong.
He says,“It appears, at this time, it may have had an over-pressurization problem causing injuries to the two individuals who were inside.”
Both of them had to be rushed to the hospital. One had significant burns and respiratory problems because of the steam. Luckily, the building had already been cleared out and guests were moved out before the repairs had even started, so, no one else was hurt.
“Due to their low occupancy, they were able to evacuate that whole building because they anticipated the outage from the service,” Stowe says.
Hazmat crews were also sent due to the explosion causing damage to a nearby natural gas line, and some of that gas leaked.