We received a number of questions about fires in Las Vegas prompted by the Monte Carlo burn, so we’re running a two-part series. Today’s QoD addresses historic casino fires, in chronological order starting from the most recent; tomorrow’s discusses procedures for securing the casino in the event of a fire.
On Feb. 18, 2003, someone dropped a lit cigarette into a laundry chute at the Aladdin and started a smoky fire that necessitated the evacuation of floors 21 and 22. A half-dozen guests were treated for smoke inhalation at the scene; no one was transported to the hospital.
Also in 2003, around 1 am on May 29, the historic Moulin Rouge casino was set ablaze by an arsonist; the resulting three-alarm fire burned for hours, destroying the 90,000-square-foot building, though not engaging the apartment house next door. A former employee of the casino, who’d been thrown out of the place for drug dealing a month earlier, admitted to planning the job, implicating a friend as the firebug.
The year 1998 was a tough one for fires in Las Vegas. In April, a small electrical fire at the Las Vegas Hilton, reportedly caused by an overflowing toilet on the eighth floor (shorting out some wires and sparking the fire), caused $1 million in damage. The fire was quickly doused by the automatic sprinkler system, but the toilet ruined several hundred thousands dollars worth of wiring.
Then in July, Palace Station experienced two freak events, one right on top of the other. During a violent thunderstorm, part of the roof collapsed, deluging the casino with water. Our very own Jean Scott was playing in the casino at the time and said, "There you are, playing blackjack in the middle of a casino, in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the summer, when a four-foot wave of water sweeps you off your chair." Then, later that night as the fire department was cleaning up the mess, lightning struck the 21st floor of the tower, which caught fire. Miraculously, no one was seriously injured in either occurrence; the water damage involved 60% of the casino, which was closed for some weeks.
In June, a raging four-alarm fire destroyed the Gold Strike Hotel-Casino near Boulder City. The fire started at 1 am and spread quickly; guests had to be awakened and evacuated by employees pounding on doors. The roof of the casino quickly collapsed, rupturing the sprinkler system, drenching the property with thousands of gallons of water, and draining the hotel’s water supply. Further problems with water pressure and access hampered efforts to put out the fire, which caused $30 million in damage. Miraculously again, no one was injured.
Finally in 1998, a grease fire broke out at the Circus Circus steakhouse. Many hundreds of people had to be evacuated from the casino and the midway; no one was injured, but it caused $55,000 in damage.
In late August 1993, the top of the Stratosphere tower caught fire while it was under construction at the 510-foot level. Firefighters could do little but watch as the three-alarm fire raged for three hours, raining orange ashes and fireballs of construction lumber onto the ground below. Hundreds of guests were evacuated from Vegas World. Six years later, Bob Stupak, owner of Vegas World, reached a $1.1 million settlement with Perini, the tower construction company, over the blaze, the cause of which was never determined.
In February 1981, a fire at the Las Vegas Hilton killed eight people and injured 400. It was later determined that a hotel restaurant employee deliberately set fire to a curtain on the eighth floor of the hotel; the man was convicted of arson and is serving eight life terms in prison.
That fire took place less than three months after the November 21, 1980, fire at the then-MGM Grand (now Bally’s) that took the lives of 87 people and injured nearly 800. That fire was by far the worst disaster in Nevada history and the second-worst hotel fire in U.S. history. (The first worst was Atlanta's Hotel Winecoff fire in 1946, where 119 people died, almost half of the occupants. The Winecoff fire was the deadliest hotel fire in the world for 25 years, until a fire at the Taeyon'gak Hotel in Seoul, Korea, killed 166.) For the whole story on the MGM Grand conflagration see QoD 1/21/07.
In June 1960, the first resort-casino to be built on Highway 91 from Los Angeles (now known as the Las Vegas Strip/Las Vegas Blvd.), the El Rancho Vegas, burned in a spectacular blaze so hot that it melted front desk keys and silver-dollar tokens (some are on display at UNLV’s Special Collections). The wind-swept fire completely destroyed the resort and a dramatic photo captured the El Rancho Vegas’ trademark windmill collapsing into the flames. Arson has been suspected for 48 years, but no evidence of it was ever released; the resort was never rebuilt and the property, at the corner of the Strip and Sahara, remains mostly vacant to this day.
Finally, in 1943, the 12-year-old Meadows Hotel and Casino, built and owned by the notorious Tony Cornero (see QoDs 5/6-7/06), burned down in another suspected, but never proven, arson fire. The Las Vegas Fire Department didn’t respond to the alarm, claiming that the Meadows was outside its jurisdiction (though some speculated that the LVFD had been bought off).
