Remember this Windsor Holiday Inn?

[TIMT]

I know I'm resurrecting an ancient thread here, but wanted to share some of the photos I took of this incident.

So there I was, around 5PM, 8 April 1999, lounging on a park bench with some neighbors & our dogs at the private park inside my Riverfront Towers Apartments complex in downtown Detroit [[100 Riverfront Drive, along the Detroit River, next door to Joe Louis Arena), watching boats & freighters pass us by on the Detroit River...

I noticed a little black smoke coming from a recently closed Ramada hotel [[prior to that, it was a well-known Holiday Inn for a long time) in Windsor, Ontario [[Canada) on the other side of the river. As soon as I saw flames, I called the Windsor Fire Dept & reported it, though I had trouble describing the exact location from their perspective, and because I didn't know the address or what business it was at the time. They sent units to the area [[I had my handheld police scanner with me, and tuned to Windsor FD on their 800MHz system) & it was easy for them to home-in on the smoke.

It was quite a show for a couple hours -- since the place was unoccupied, they fought it as a defensive fire, but because the property was directly along the Detroit River, they had a hard time battling the riverfront side of it, eventually receiving help from the Windsor Police boat, USCG 41' boat from Station Belle Isle, and the Detroit Fire Dept boat, 'Curtis Randolph.'

It was kind of humerus, also surprising & frustrating, to see the USCG Cutter MACKINAW, a 290' ice-breaker built in 1943-1944, slowly pass right on by the action, down-bound on the river, without stopping to assist. Meanwhile, a poor little 41' Patrol Boat from USCG Station Belle Isle was there with their water cannon... NO IDEA why MACKINAW didn't stop -- clearly the fire was not even close to being under-control, and despite their draft, I think they could have gotten close enough to use their water cannons & hoses...

[Gistok]

^I bet that a nearly 300 ft. long boat would find it nearly impossible to make a U-Turn on the Detroit River once they were already passing by [heading downriver], due to the current and narrowness of the shipping channel. Since 3 other boats were already there, the large boat might have been a navigation hazard to the other boats.