Crime & Safety

Fire Nearly Destroys Lakeview Motel

Source of blaze is under investigation; maintenance manager says he believes a disgruntled tenant may have set it deliberately.

The Lakeview Motel was severely damaged in an early morning fire that may have suspicious origins.

Plainfield Police Cmdr. John Konopek said the blaze started in an unoccupied room at about 1 a.m. today and quickly spread into the roof of the 19-room motel on U.S. 30 at Renwick Road. Investigators were on the scene this morning in an attempt to determine the fire's source, he said.

About two-thirds of the building was damaged, and two guests -- a woman in her 30s and her teenage son -- were treated for minor smoke inhalation, Konopek said. The damage is estimated to be $300,000 to $350,000, he said.

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The motel is uninhabitable and the long- and short-term guests staying there, estimated to be about 10 people, have been relocated to other accommodations, he said.

Although Konopek would not speculate on what started the fire, the motel's longtime maintenance manager D. Smiley said he believes an unhappy tenant may have been the source. The man had recently been moved to a new room and may have deliberately set the fire in retaliation, assuming the fire would be small and limited, Smiley said.

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"In the 15 years I've been here, I've never seen anything like it," said Smiley, whose own apartment unit behind the hotel is still habitable. "Out of 19 rooms, 10 of them are pretty much gone."

Tenant Tim Apel, who has lived at the Lakeview on and off for six or seven years, said he was awakened by someone pounding on his door and telling him to evacuate the buiding.

"I grabbed my (oxygen) machine and got out," Apel said. "I wasn't going to let a $5,000 machine burn up."

Konopek said it took about an hour to extinguish the blaze, with more than 50 firefighters on the scene. The Joliet, Troy Township, Oswego, Minooka, Naperville, Channahon, Elwood and Lockport Township departments responded, he said.

This is the second Plainfield fire in less than a week. A house at 24126 Newcastle St. was extensively damaged from a blaze that began in the garage.

The Lakeview Motel was built sometime in the late 1940s or early '50s, Smiley said. In its heyday, its location on U.S. 30/Lincoln Highway would have been a place to stay for travelers making a cross-country trip in the days before interstates.

Smiley said that while he's happy to still have a home, he is now out of a job.

"I worked here 24/7," he said. "This is like the Chicago fire to me."


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