Fire at infamous Los Angeles hotel started by scooter

Firefighters battled a fire late Monday inside the historic Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, which authorities said was sparked by a scooter. 

According to the Los Angeles Fire Department, crews were dispatched to the hotel, located at 640 Main Street, at 10:47 p.m. 

Firefighters arrived on the scene to find heavy smoke coming from a unit on the sixth floor of the 15-story building. Crews were able to contain the blaze to just one unit; however, the entire hotel was evacuated as a precaution. 

An LAFD spokesperson told KTLA that the fire was started by a scooter, but it did not contain a lithium battery. 

The fire was extinguished in about 20 minutes, and no injuries were reported. 

The Cecil Hotel gained notoriety throughout the 20th century when several guests died while staying there. Serial killers Richard Ramirez (also known as the “Nightstalker”) and Jack Unterweger also temporarily resided at the Cecil in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively; each is alleged to have killed multiple people while staying there.

By 2011, the Cecil was rebranded as the “Stay on Main” and garnered international attention in 2013 following the mysterious death of Canadian student Elisa Lam, who was found deceased in one of the hotel’s rooftop water tanks more than two weeks after she went missing. Her death was later ruled an accident.

In 2021, the 159,803-square-foot building began operating as affordable housing for unhoused people in L.A., and in more recently, the hotel was the subject of a Netflix documentary titled “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” — which focused on the death of Elisa Lam — and was also fictionally recreated in the fifth season of the hit FX series “American Horror Story.”

In March 2024, the hotel was listed for sale on the commercial property realtor website LoopNet, but as of Oct. 8, the property was no longer being advertised on the site.