KEY POINTS:
Hundreds of guests at a central Christchurch hotel were forced to evacuate the building this morning after a fire sprinkler burst, flooding several floors.
The incident was reported originally as a fire on the top floor of the 24-storey Grand Chancellor Hotel in Cashel St as seven fire appliances and crews raced to the high-rise building just after 5am.
But general manager Tim Stonhill said a fire sprinkler head in a plant room on the hotel's top floor had burst.
"As the pressure in the sprinkler system drops it automatically sets off the fire alarm which caused the evacuation of the hotel," Mr Stonhill said.
Guests from the hotel, which he said was 92 per cent full last night, gathered on the street on a rain-drenched morning.
Mr Stonhill said management at the Holiday Inn across the street were "fantastic", taking the guests in, giving them coffee and keeping them warm while firefighters checked the building and shut off the sprinkler system.
Water damage was confined to about four floors.
"We're pretty much okay," Mr Stonhill said. "It's confined to corridors and plant rooms in the central core of the building. There's a few floors that are quite wet and we're cleaning up the mess at the moment."
- NZPA
