[3] In June 1985, the Dupont Plaza was inspected by the local fire department and was found to have deficiencies in its safety systems, including malfunctioning equipment and lack of evacuation and emergency plans.

[8] One of the main issues causing the dispute was an alleged management plan to terminate sixty union members from employment and replace them with non-union employees.

[7] Three union members—Héctor Escudero Aponte, José Rivera López, and Arnaldo Jiménez Rivera—planned to set several fires with the intention of scaring tourists who wanted to stay at the hotel.

At around 3:30 pm, they placed opened cans of chafing fuel in a storage room filled with newly purchased furniture, adjacent to the ballroom on the ground floor of the hotel.

[4][10] While some of the labor organizers created a distraction by staging a fight just outside the doors to the ballroom, three men set the fuel alight.

After flashing over in the ballroom (which witnesses confused with an explosion), the hot gases swept up the grand staircase into the lobby of the hotel.

[7]The Puerto Rico Fire Department was dispatched at around 3:40 pm and thirteen firetrucks, 100 firefighters, and 35 ambulances responded.

[6] Agents from the FBI's San Juan field office worked closely with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to identify suspects and build cases against them.

[12] The union representing the employees denied that it or any of its members had been involved in starting the fire, and offered a $15,000 reward for information that would help the investigation.

[21] After nine months of trial, the Court directed verdicts of no liability in favor of three defendants: Johnson Controls, Inc., Barber Colman, Inc., and Quantum Chemical.

[24] In all, payments for the deaths and injuries totaled more than $210 million and court records show that the case involved more than 1,000,000 documents.

[3] On September 25, 1990, three years after the disaster, the United States enacted the Hotel and Motel Fire Safety Act of 1990, requiring all hotels and other public accommodations wanting to accommodate federal workers or hold federally funded activities to have smoke detectors in all guest rooms and to have working sprinkler systems if the building had more than three stories.

[26] U.S. Representative Sherwood L. Boehlert stated that the law was one of the first times the U.S. government took "direct action to protect the public at large from the danger of fire".

[27] AIG, a lead insurance underwriter supplying coverage for the blaze, ended up acquiring title to the shuttered hotel in June 1989, as part of the settlement of claims arising from the fire.

[28] In October 1992, AIG announced plans to completely renovate the hotel at a cost of $130 million and rebrand it as a Marriott.