Memories of deadly hotel fires spark feelings of fear, disgust

The fire at the Monte Carlo made me queasy with fear Friday. Fear for people in those rooms. Fear for firefighters doing their best.

But mixed with fear was also some disgust because of memories of 27 years ago that remain horribly vivid. I was a reporter with the Las Vegas Review-Journal when an electrical fire at the MGM Grand on Nov. 21, 1980, caused the deaths of 87 people and when the Las Vegas Hilton arson fire three months later, in 1981, killed eight people.

Those 95 deaths, plus hundreds of injuries, changed the safety standards in Las Vegas, although it took the second fire to convince Nevada officials that setting higher safety standards was a necessity, not an option.

The fire at what is now Bally's but was then the old MGM Grand grew out of control because there were no sprinklers in the casino. They weren't required because no one envisioned a fireball rolling through any casino.

The fire became worse because of building code violations that were ignored. With sprinklers, the fire would have been put out quickly. Sprinklers in the casino would have added $192,000 to the cost of the $106 million hotel.

Hence my disgust that a penny-pinching decision and a gutless safety code created a situation that killed 87 people. And I'm disgusted it took the Hilton fire to get hotel executives to quit opposing expensive retrofitting.

I wondered about the reactions of two men I know with high-rise views and close ties to the MGM fire litigation -- U.S. District Judge Philip Pro and Las Vegas attorney Will Kemp.

As a magistrate, Pro oversaw the pre-trial discovery of the complex litigation. He heard of the Monte Carlo fire about 11:45 a.m. and from his chambers in the federal court saw the smoke dissipating. "The first thing you think about is the MGM and the death and the injuries," he said. "I hoped it was not the kind of conflagration like the MGM and people weren't dying."

Pro pulled out his key chain to show his clerks the fusible link he carries, a constant reminder of a tragedy and how minor things can create major havoc. The fusible link was part of the ventilation system to control the spread of smoke. Because it wasn't installed properly, deadly smoke moved through the MGM Grand's ventilation.

Kemp, who represented MGM plaintiffs, has a high-rise office in the Hughes Center that gave him a direct view of the Monte Carlo fire, which he initially thought was a car fire. When someone said it was the hotel, he didn't believe it. A Strip hotel on fire? Impossible.

"I didn't think about people getting hurt because everything is sprinkled to the max now. It's hard to imagine there'd be a major loss of life. If it was an older hotel, I would have thought about that," he said. "I didn't get this sense of fear that there's a major tragedy brewing. But I am an optimist."

The Monte Carlo fire was on the roof. Kemp said it would have been more life-threatening if the fire had started on the ground floor, because that would trap people coming down.

Unlike me, Kemp doesn't worry about Harrah's Entertainment's remodeling of the Rio and Harrah's Las Vegas without permits or safety inspections.

"I bet half the hotels in town have been remodeled without permits," Kemp said. "The chief engineer wants it done quick, on budget and on the cheap. This is the way the chief engineers have always done it in this town."

But Kemp didn't fret. "We have the best life safety equipment in the world."

Maybe so. But I'd still like to believe hotels aren't cutting corners and safety inspectors are doing their jobs, because I remember when they weren't. I remember the final count of 83 code violations discovered after the MGM burned.

David Demers, the fire expert who authored the report on the MGM fire, wondered on the fire's 25th anniversary: "How could anybody not have seen that stuff?"

I'm enough of an optimist to dearly hope nobody will say that when the report on the Monte Carlo is complete.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275.