When the Hard Rock Hotel construction site collapsed Saturday, many tourists from all over the world were sleeping right next door. City House Hostel faces Burgundy Street. It's right next door to the collapsed building.
"We were all asleep and then the building just... feels like an earthquake," said Amanda Griffin, who works and lives at City House Hostel. "You've just woken up, so we're all in pajamas."
The hostel was fully booked. There were about 100 people from all over the world inside when the building next door came down.
"We have a bunch of people getting ready to come in and then we just feel the ground shake," said Craig Ketterman, General Manager at City House Hostel.
He felt the Hard Rock Hotel right next door collapse.
"You're talking about a building that's attached to ours," Ketterman said.
On the roof, he saw construction workers panicking to get away.
"There were literally guys who were working on the project that had jumped off the scaffolding and had jumped on my building," he said.
Ketterman started banging on doors, screaming for everyone to get out.
"I'm responsible for 106 lives at that point and it's scary," he said.
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Ketterman and all of his guests left everything behind.
"That's our home for me and my staff, that's where we live and now we don't have a place to live," he said. "There's people from all over the world who don't have passports, their luggage."
They sat outside for hours.
"There's people crying at 3 a.m., saying 'I'm in a foreign country, I have no where else to go, I can't afford any of these other places and luckily some hotels pitched in to help out," Ketterman said.
Hotels eventually put them up and firefighters helped them get only the necessities like passports and medications.
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With so many questions about what will happen next with the collapse zone, there are also a lot of questions about the future of the hostel.
"Waiting for answers that we don't have," Griffin said.
Right now, they're not booking any future guests, and with the Hard Rock still at risk of falling, there is a threat to neighboring buildings.
"There is a bleak future but we have our lives," Ketterman said. "It's been hard, it hasn't been easy, but we're making it. It could be much worse and for some people it was."
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