South Brunswick Motel Fire Caused By Overheated Fridge Coil

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, NJ — The motel fire that heavily damaged the Best Western on Rt. 1 Sunday night and sent two firefighters to the hospital for heat exhaustion was caused by a refrigerator coil that overheated, South Brunswick police said. The coil then caused the carpet to catch fire.

A guest staying at the Best Western Princeton Manor Inn & Suites at 4191 Rt. 1 first noticed the fire in his room at 7:23 p.m. Sunday. He alerted other guests staying in the hotel and in total, police received about a dozen 911 calls about it.

Kingston Fire Department arrived and observed heavy fire pouring out of the front of the hotel room and spreading to nearby rooms. Guests from all 50 rooms were safely evacuated. It took 60 firefighters from six different fire departments — Kingston, Monmouth Junction, Kendall Park, Plainsboro, Little Rocky Hill, and North Brunswick #3 — to put out the blaze. That's a photo of the fire above, taken by South Brunswick police.

Two firefighters were transported to University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro for heat exhaustion and later released. The hotel was left uninhabitable.