A hotel guest has spoken of his horror after waking up to find the corridor to his room filled with steam and 'boiling hot' water.
Peter Ellis said he was woken by a 'terrible noise' in the early hours of Tuesday while staying at the Lenwade House Hotel, in Fakenham Road, Lenwade.
As the 58-year-old opened his bedroom door to investigate, he found the hotel corridor flooded and shrouded in hot steam.
'It was an absolute horror,' Mr Ellis said. 'There was hot steam in our faces and boiling hot water on the floor, and we couldn't get out of the hotel.'
The property investor said he ran over to his first-floor window and saw guests below already climbing out of their rooms.
'The ceilings downstairs had begun to collapse and people were climbing out of their windows to escape,' he said.
'They were shouting: 'Get out, get out,' but we couldn't.'
Mr Ellis, who was visiting Norfolk from Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire, said he was trapped in his room for around an hour.
He said he had phoned reception at around 3.30am and the on-call manager to find out what was going on, but no one picked up.
The flooding had been caused by a burst valve on the hotel's immersion heater.
A hotel spokesman said eight bedroom were directly affected and some corridor ceilings had collapsed.
Mr Ellis, who was with his partner at the time, said they were eventually helped out of the room by the fire service.
But he claimed that his troubles did not end there.
After joining around 20 other guests waiting outside the hotel, he was eventually told at 7.30am that the hotel was closed and they would have to find alternative accommodation.
A spokesman for the hotel, which is located north-west of Norwich, said the damage from the flood resulted in a three-day closure, with the building reopening on Friday.
The spokesman said no guests, including a large wedding party, were left 'out of pocket'.
Responding to claims that a fire alarm did not work when it was smashed by a guest, the spokesman said there had been a fault.
'We did everything by the book,' the spokesman said. 'Unfortunately people had to leave but we could not continue running the business this week.'
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