Fire hits O’Connor law office

* Damage estimated at $100,000[/B]

A fire allegedly caused by the constant turning on and off of electric power engulfed the O’Connor Berman Dotts & Banes law office on the second floor of the eight-story Marianas Business Plaza building in Susupe early Sunday morning.

As of 7pm last night, Department of Public Safety spokesperson Lei Ogumoro had yet to release the report about the fire to the media.

Saipan Tribune gathered from witnesses that no one was hurt in the blaze that broke out at 1:30am inside the office of attorney Joseph Horrey. Damage to property was estimated at $100,000. Horrey is a member of the O’Connor law office.

Firefighters managed to prevent the blaze from spreading to other offices and establishments within the building.

Lawyer Robert O’Connor told the media yesterday that there are 14 offices in their law firm—one was completely destroyed while another had 50 percent damage. The rest of offices except for two had smoke and water damage, he added.

“Almost every office has smoke damage. But 98 percent of the files are okay,” he said.

He said they believe that the fire started from the battery pack of a computer inside Horrey’s office and spread to the office of the secretary.

“So it completely destroyed the lawyer’s [Horrey’s] office and mostly destroyed the secretary’s office. And there is a smoke damage throughout the rest of the office,” O’Connor said.

He said 98 percent of their paper files that are in cabinets in different rooms were not damaged.

“The only files that were damaged were the files that happened to be in Joseph Horrey’s office. The law firm will recover and should be open for business in a week and should be back to normal in two to three weeks,” he said.

O’Connor estimated the damage to property at $100,000.

“All the walls, all the books are covered with smoke. The carpet is completely ruined. The wallpaper is ruined. The couches and desks are ruined. Windows are broken. Computers are smoke filled. We’re trying to clean them and save them,” he said.

The lawyer said of their files are in computers and that their files storage area was untouched.

“It’s a sad thing to see this happen to your law firm. But the client files are safe and we should be back to normal very soon,” he said.

O’Connor blamed the constant turning on and off by the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.’s of the power for affecting the UPS battery power in Horrey’s computer.

“That probably sparked the fire,” he said.

O’Connor learned about the incident Sunday morning. He said the building’s security first discovered it at 1:30am and called the fire department.

“It took the fire department about 20 minutes to get here. The fire department did a good job when they got here,” he said.

O’Connor said one of their clocks inside attorney David Banes’ office is melted.

“The time is set at 1:45 when it melted. So you can see that the air heated up, the upper layer of air went down the hallway and took black smoke with it,” he said.

O’Connor said the air-conditioning unit of attorney Michael Dotts, which was 60 feet away from the center of the hall, also melted.

The law office will be temporarily staying at the first floor of the same building for a week.

Saipan Tribune learned that as a result of the fire operation, water leaked to a portion of the first floor occupied by KWAW Radio Com.

The water damaged the radio station’s one laptop computer, one computer printer, and one telephone unit. KWAW, however, was business as usual yesterday, using its own generator.

The Marianas Business Plaza (formerly called Nauru Building), which houses about 40 establishments, lost its power due to the fire. The building’s crew used its own generator, but it broke down Sunday noon. This prompted some offices to close down yesterday.

The Philippine Consulate and Philippine Overseas Labor Office, along with some offices, were still business as usual despite the blackout.

As of noon yesterday, the building’s maintenance personnel were still waiting for the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. to re-install the power supply to the building.