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Hotel remained closed for second night after burst pipe

The Marriott Waterfront remained closed Tuesday night after a burst pipe forced the Harbor East hotel to relocate about 900 guests.

Contractors were working to clear standing water and wet-vacuum carpet and drywall, said Rob McCulloch, the hotel's director of sales and marketing.

"Vendors have responded very quickly to assess the situation with regards to escalators and elevators," he said. "Within a few hours of the burst, we had over five large trucks … down already to clear out the water."

The pipe burst at about 5:30 p.m. Monday in a stairwell between the fourth and fifth floors of the 32-story hotel after a rubber coupling gave way, a fire spokesman said. No hotel guests or employees were injured, McCulloch said.

Along with the lobby, portions of a few small meeting rooms on the third and fourth floors were affected, he said.

No guest rooms were flooded, but with the water in the lobby, "we didn't want to take a chance," he said.

Hotel staff reached out to other hotels in the area through the Downtown Partnership's downtown safety coalition to secure rooms for their guests, said spokesman Mike Evitts.

"The Marriott let us know about their problem," he said. "We were able to provide the flooded hotel with information about others."

The coalition, which the Marriott belongs to, shares information and connects resources in the event of an emergency, Evitts said. The network was used last year when a water main break flooded Lombard Street and during February's severe snow storms, he said.

The Marriott paid for those rooms, he said. They also stationed staff members in the lobbies of each hotel housing displaced guests so "they can give constant updates to them as things change, to inform them quickly," McCulloch said.

The Marriott spokesman said that some of those guests may have already been displaced from their homes by power outages as a result of the storms elsewhere in the region.

"There were a lot of people checking into hotels because they didn't have electricity for many hours," he said.

The start of the mental health conference scheduled to begin Tuesday evening has been postponed until Wednesday morning, he said.

The pipe burst during a busy time for the hotel. "We were forecasting to be sold out from Thursday night and high occupancy through the weekend as well," McCulloch said.

liz.kay@baltsun.com

http://www.twitter.com/lfkay

Reporter Jessica Anderson contributed to this article.

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