Faulty wiring leading to a bottom-floor room caused a fire at America’s Best Inn on South Frontage Road that kept fire crews busy for about three hours Wednesday evening.
“There’s a chase-way near one of the rooms on the bottom floor where wiring powers microwaves and refrigerators,” Vicksburg Fire Department investigator Leslie Sanders said this morning. “What was on fire was a refrigerator in one of the rooms.”
No injuries were reported. Two guests were staying in the part of the hotel that caught fire, Sanders said. The business was open this morning, with a half-burned mattress and a mini-fridge visible from the roadway.
Flames destroyed four rooms and multiple rooms on an upper floor were damaged when the blaze spread to a “wide-open” attic built without fire-stops, Sanders said. Four VFD stations worked the scene from the time the fire was reported at about 4:55 p.m. to about 8:30 p.m., Sanders said.
Sanders said the fire was the third this week in the city.
“They were able to get the fire under control quickly,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said this morning.
America’s Best Inn was built in the 1980s and is owned by Devenora Patel and managed by Nehal Patel.

Reporter Danny Barrett Jr. contributed to this report.