Bill Sneeringer, in the restaurant he had owned for 12 years, was watching a typical Friday brunch unfold at the State Cafe and Grill, with 40 customers digging into breakfast classics. Then, the alarm bells rang.
“We smelled some smoke, but we couldn’t tell where it was coming from,” he said. “It turned out it was coming through our crawl space from outside, and so it was setting off our alarm in the basement.”
Sneeringer was one of hundreds who experienced a massive Feb. 20 blaze in Easton at the Hotel Hampton complex, which injured multiple firefighters and residents, displaced 40 and prompted a community-wide response. The cause of the fire, as of Thursday, is still under investigation.
“One thing about tragedy in Easton is that people do come together as a community and offer assistance,” said Mayor Sal Panto Jr.
After hours of watching the fire rage, Sneeringer got home when a firefighter informed him that the restaurant’s basement, which largely served as a storage unit, was “up to the rafters in water.” In 2022, the restaurant closed for nearly a year due to a roof fire. Sneeringer estimated that repairing the restaurant would likely take months.
“It just wasn’t something I was thinking would happen,” Sneeringer said. He said one of his cooks lost his residence during the fire.
Wilson firefighter Bobby Lewullis, who fought the fire on Hotel Hampton’s third floor, passed out on a 35-foot-tall ladder and fell from 20 feet above the ground, resulting in severe injuries.
Luckily, Lewullis landed on his feet, according to Sandra Rogers, his mother and Lafayette College’s assistant director of public safety. The first thing he said, according to her: “Did everybody get out?”
“He really wanted everybody’s focus to turn towards the victims that were there,” Rogers said of her son, a former Marine and aspiring firefighter since childhood.
Lewullis was released from the hospital on Tuesday, with two fractures in his foot and ankle, a broken back, torn shoulder and concussion, according to Rogers. A Friday fundraiser at Wilson’s Pints & Pies Pub will donate proceeds to Lewullis and his family.
Precision Cuts Barbershop, a popular spot for affordable haircuts, also faced severe water damage and is currently uninhabitable.
“We left our stuff in there, thinking the fire wasn’t going to be big, but the fire ended up getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and we ended up losing pretty much everything,” said manager Andres Vega.
Vega emphasized that the shop is “there for people at rough times.”
“And now I feel like our shop is in rough times,” he said.
The store is able to operate at a different location in Wilson, but staffing has been reduced, according to Vega.
Other businesses in Easton impacted by the blaze include Jois Boutique and MHK Family Market. A small business fire fund was recently published on GoFundMe.
Sylvia Kimelman ‘26, a volunteer with the Forks Township Fire Department, said she watched part of the Hotel Hampton exterior collapse right in front of her. After stressful conversations amongst Met-Ed and firefighters, the safest decision was to cut city power units in its entirety, partially due to electrical hazard risks around the firefighters’ ladders.
3,500 customers lost power Friday afternoon for around an hour, according to Met-Ed, including in Lafayette College-owned apartment buildings.
Kimelman called the emergency response a “pretty chaotic scene.”
“Firefighters couldn’t get to it without having to tear open the walls,” she said about the fire.
“Single room occupancy facilities like the Hotel Hampton and Hotel Lafayette are difficult because you have a lot of people living in a small area, and that made it difficult for the firefighters to make sure everybody was evacuated,” Panto said, referencing another recent fire at the Hotel Lafayette, which also displaced around 40 residents last March. Easton also experienced another major apartment fire in June, which displaced 14.
Cristina Maisel, a spokesperson for the local American Red Cross branch, said 35 residents stayed in Northampton Community College’s emergency shelter on Tuesday night, which was set up on Sunday. She said dozens of volunteers have worked to replace prescription medication, provide spiritual care and make meals.
“I just feel like the vibes right now are so bad, so I want everyone to remember how resilient this community is,” said Julie VanOsdol, the manager of non-profit Easton Main Street Initiative. “We came together so quickly. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley, a non-profit dedicated to community action, worked with the Greater Easton Development Partnership to set up a city fire fund to help victims. The city of Easton announced on Wednesday that it would open a “multi-agency resource center” to support victims, which is open Friday afternoon and Saturday morning at State Theatre Center for the Arts.
“We really want to see what we can do, pulling everybody together in one place to help them as fast as we can,” Kristen Cooper, a community coordinator for the Easton Police Department, said of the resource center at Wednesday’s city council meeting.
Cooper confirmed on Wednesday that all Hotel Hampton residents had been accounted for. At a press conference last Saturday, officials acknowledged that not everyone inside Hotel Hampton had been counted.
According to VanOsdol, donation centers are currently overwhelmed with “way too many donations,” but are still accepting. One option to donate online is at unitedwayglv.org, under “Fire Fund.”
