Three days before a deadly fire roared through a Marietta hotel, firefighters responding to a false alarm there found several violations, including a burned-out exit sign, an empty fire extinguisher and a blocked fire exit.

All but one of those violations — the malfunctioning fire alarm that led to the false call— had been fixed before Sunday morning's pre-dawn fire, said Jackie Gibbs, Marietta's fire chief.

Another inspection was scheduled for Sunday — the day of the fire.

Now, state fire officials are focusing on other violations that may have contributed to the blaze. And they point to a loophole that allows older hotels in Georgia to operate without sprinkler systems.

Sprinklers, fire officials said, would have made the hotel a soggy mess, but they likely would have minimized what became a three-alarm blaze, killing a guest from South Carolina and injuring 26 others.

But for guests, or even government officials, finding out which hotels have sprinkler systems isn't easy.

The state fire marshal's office could not provide a list and referred questions to the U.S. Fire Administration.

That agency, which falls under the wide umbrella of the federal Homeland Security Department, maintains a database of 35,000 hotels nationwide that comply with federal regulations for fire safety.

It also lists if a hotel or motel has a sprinkler system, which helps the federal government decide where employees can stay while on business.

According to that list of nearly 1,300 motels or hotels in Georgia, 535 do not have sprinklers. Nearly 150 of them are in Metro Atlanta, according to the government's list.

But that list raises more questions than it answers.

The list, for instance, shows that the Marietta Holiday Inn, the scene of Sunday's fatal fire, has sprinklers, when fire officials say it doesn't. And telephone calls to 20 hotels on the list indicated that more than half of them do have a sprinkler system, according to front-desk personnel.

So what's the state to do?

Code requirements

Georgia fire code requires that hotels that exceed 75 feet in height be equipped with sprinklers, regardless of when they were built.

Hotels that aren't 75 feet tall need sprinklers — if they were built after 1992.

The Holiday Inn in Marietta is 70 feet tall and was built in 1973.

Cities and counties, though, may pass stricter regulations.

Gwinnett County is among those that goes further than the state fire code. In Gwinnett, any building three or more stories has to have sprinklers.

Decatur began requiring sprinklers in all new high-rises, hotels, restaurants and other public facilities in 1992, said Hugh Saxon, Decatur's assistant city manager. Owners of older structures had 10 years to install sprinklers — and all did, Saxon said.

In Clayton County, hotels that are taller than one story are required to have sprinklers, too.

Georgia, said John Oxendine, the state fire marshal, is among the leading states keeping its codes up to date.

However, Florida's requirements for sprinklers are much more stringent, according to Jim Goodloe, a fire prevention official in the Florida state Fire Marshal's office.

In 1983, Florida passed a law requiring motels that are three stories or more with interior corridors be retro-fitted with sprinklers.

"As of three or four years ago all Florida properties except three had been retrofitted," Goodloe said. "So essentially we have been brought into compliance."

Cause under investigation

But that wasn't the case, fire officials said, at the Holiday Inn in Marietta, which overlooks the Delk Road exit of I-75 near Dobbins Air Reserve Base and caters to business travelers and local professional and civic groups.

At 3 a.m. Sunday, a fire began in a second-floor room and quickly spread. As firefighters battled the blaze, they found the body of Kevin Ardis, a 35-year-old insurance agent from South Carolina, in the hotel's hallway.

On Tuesday, as Georgia officials continued to try to determine what caused Sunday morning's fire, Ardis was buried in McMinnville, S.C. — his casket carried by childhood hunting buddies, said his mother, Elaine Ardis.

Ardis was in Atlanta to attend a conference, and had just started working for his company three months ago after a long hiatus during which he sold real estate in Tennessee and served in the South Carolina Army National guard as an infantryman, according to his mother.

Back in Georgia, a spokesman for Lodgian, the company that owns the Holiday Inn in Marietta, would not comment on the investigation until a final report is issued.

In the meantime, inspectors are looking into how the building was constructed and whether there may have been other code violations, including problems with flammable materials, discovered after the fire at the seven-story hotel, Oxendine said.

"Fire investigators have seen evidence of ... violations," Oxendine said Tuesday. "We are looking into issues regarding [access] and flammability of materials."

Inspectors had not decided if the hotel had violated the city's fire safety code, said Gibbs, Marietta's fire chief.

The city tries to inspect hotels at least once a year, Gibbs said, but records show the hotel has only been inspected three times since 1995.

Staff writers Michael Pearson, Richard Whitt, Charles Yoo, D.L. Bennett, Ken Sugiura, Kevin Duffy, Eric Stirgus, Steve Visser and Add Seymour contributed to this article.