This is a timely question, since the high winds here Tuesday wiped out power for some 14,000 unfortunate residents in the valley, not to mention numerous traffic signals although no casinos were affected, to our knowledge.
To answer this question, we're actually going to fuse together several different QoDs that we've answered on this subject over the years, starting with what is supposed to happen when there's a casino power failure, and then sharing some instances of what actually went down.
On April 22, 2006, an ex-casino surveillance expert and occasional expert contributor to QoD anwered the question:
"What is the procedure at the casinos when there is a power outage or emergency (think Monte Carlo fire) concerning the gaming area? How are games stopped and money secured?"
"Since most casinos have back-up emergency generators that kick in within 10 seconds of power interruption, complete power outages are rare. They’re not impossible, however; I experienced a power loss every four years over a 20-year period for reasons such as fires, floods, and snow storms."
"Every casino has its own set of policies and procedures, but most dealer schools give out the following advice.
"If you should experience a blackout situation, immediately sweep in (from the outside in) all wagers and lay over your chip tray with your arms/elbows pulled up to protect the sides of the tray. Remain in this position until light returns, the game can be closed (lid safely locked), or your floor supervisor advises you to do otherwise. Dealers, boxmen, and floor supervisors should make every attempt to secure all monies, chips, markers, cards and dice from within the betting area from possible theft, bet capping, or pinching. The round in progress will be called dead or no dice. After power and stability are returned, surveillance will do a tape review to verify what belongs to whom."
"If you have an emergency that requires an evacuation, the above procedure applies with the exception that the dealers are advised not to risk life or limb for money. They’re told to stay calm, close their games (if conditions permit), and leave via the pre-planned emergency evacuation route. They are asked to advise guests of the emergency exits as they vacate the building.
"The floor people are advised to secure the games in their sections (if possible) before leaving their assigned area. They’re also told to verify that all of their staff (dealers, pit staff) have safely vacated the area (if conditions permit) and then they, the floor supervisor, should leave the building via the pre-designated route.
"Surveillance employees are to change tapes (if applicable), adjust cameras (to view the widest amount of space possible), and point as many cameras as possible toward the cage area and to stay as long conditions are safe.
"Security officers are usually the last to leave. They are to evacuate the property as fast and as safe as possible and to assist the authorities (police, fire fighters, etc.), in any way possible (conditions permitting) before leaving the property. They are not to risk life or limb for money, but they must remove all patrons from the casino by all means possible. Should they encounter players who refuse to leave (and they have), they are to advise the police after removing themselves from harms way.
"Now, if the emergency is a bomb threat, it’s a whole different deal. During a bomb threat, only security officers are informed. They then divvy up the hotel and casino into numerous parts and send out teams to begin the search for anything unusual, such as orphaned luggage, strange bags or devices, etc. No one is asked to leave, unless something questionable is found or if real, valid information is received. It’s no secret that hotel/casinos get numerous bomb threats annually. Most are found to come from disgruntled employees or sore losers.
"Due to historical events in Las Vegas (the huge MGM fire and a number of smaller ones), fires are the most respected of all emergencies. Therefore, Clark County has some of the toughest building inspectors and fire-safety controls of any state, nationwide. All rooms, halls, and public areas must have fire sprinklers. On top of that, fire extinguishers must be strategically placed in every hallway and office. There are also automated voice-alert systems advising the entire hotel and casino of a pending emergency, along with red flashing lights and strobe lights that can only be reset by two security officers.
"The hotel operators know which rooms are rented and how many people are registered to each room. This information is given to the fire department ASAP. Throughout the casino you’ll see chrome wall plates with a small hole in the center labeled 'Fire Phone,' which allow for instant communication with the authorities. In fact, most casinos have a 'safety officer' present at all times. This individual checks pressure gauges on all the fire extinguishers, the kick panels on the (fire) doors, and the fire-hose stations, along with the proper functioning of strobe and other emergency lighting and obstructions at the fire doors and emergency exits, and other similar tasks.
"It’s not an overstatement to say that the casinos and the fire departments have a wonderful working relationship.
"There’s an old expression: "If I have to be inside a building that catches on fire, let it be in a fire station or a hotel/casino." The gambling industry takes fire seriously and, given recent events at the Monte Carlo, it should."
So, that's the official protocol and how it all goes down when things go according to plan. In reality, however, it's not always quite so smooth, as we explain in a couple of later QoDs, including the following two from April 22, 2006 and April 29, 2011, respectively.
Has Las Vegas, or any individual hotel, ever had a major power failure? It seems like they could never have enough backup generators or security to keep things from getting out of hand.
"Las Vegas has weathered several power outages in recent years. This writer had personal experience of one in July, 1997, while working as part of a film crew at Caesars Palace. Apparently, someone drove a car into a transformer on the Strip in the wee hours and knocked out the Nevada Power supply to the hotel. We all woke up in the morning to no air conditioning, lights, or elevators to transport our filming equipment downstairs. In the stifling July heat, we struggled down to the casino in a vain search for coffee. There, we were greeted by the surreal sight of ladies in the previous night's evening gowns still playing the slots, which seemed to be about the only thing powered by the hotel's emergency generator.
"Shortly after midnight on New Year's Eve 2005, revelers at four Las Vegas casinos found themselves temporarily plunged into darkness when the Rio, Palms, Barbary Coast, and Flamingo properties all fell victim to a power outage. The cause was later determined to be either metallic party streamers or a mylar balloon that hit overhead power cables during the festivities and tripped a breaker at the substation near Valley View Boulevard and Flamingo. All the affected properties had backup generators that restored power to most areas of the resorts, including water pumps, refrigerators, and, of course, slot machines, within seconds, although some partygoers found themselves stranded by inoperative elevators. From the reports that we read, most people just seemed relieved that the power failure was not the result of a terrorist attack and, on the whole, it was business as usual on and off the casino floors until crews fixed the problem at about 1:35 a.m. (In the course of researching this answer, we called the slot clubs at both the Palms and the Rio to find out what the implications were in terms of slot club points if an outage occurs while you're playing. Both properties assured us that no information is lost, even though it may appear that your machine goes "dead" for a few seconds while the emergency generators kick in.)
"The only instance we're aware of in recent years that a casino encountered serious and disruptive power problems was in April 2004. Bellagio — at that time the most expensive hotel ever built — was brought to a standstill by the failure of a high-voltage cable in an electrical vault. About 3,000 guests awoke on Easter morning to muggy rooms and cold showers after an "unknown event" disrupted the hotel's primary power. The incident burned out thousands of feet of power lines at the resort. This necessitated the shutdown of the property's backup power so that the damaged power lines could be replaced, but not before management had paid off bettors and implemented a wholesale evacuation of the property. Bellagio remained closed for nearly four days while repairs were carried out. It was estimated that the closure cost the hotel approximately $3 million a day.
"Perhaps the only person to get a laugh out of this unprecedented event was Gary Scott Thompson, the screenwriter of NBC’s "Las Vegas" series. With first-season teething problems and costs spiraling out of control, earlier in the year he'd found himself in need of a storyline that kept the entire cast trapped within the fictitious Montecito casino. Inspired by a New York blackout around that time, he came up with the idea of a massive power outage, but when the show aired it was apparently greeted with some derision by Vegas insiders, who claimed that such a thing could never happen. In one of those strange instances of fact imitating fiction, Bellagio proved that it could.
"Some LVA readers also wrote in with additions to this answer, including one who reminded us of the dramatic power outage that occurred here at UNLV's opening home football game back in 2002, which we happened to be present at. Here's the write up from the October 2002 LVA:
"There was a particularly bizarre ending to the University of Nevada-Las Vegas' opening home football game against Wisconsin. With tens of thousands of rabid Badgers fans swarming the city (and betting on their team), the game was abruptly halted when the lights went out in the stadium with less than eight minutes remaining (remember that time reference) and UNLV trailing 27-7. When the game was eventually called, sports-book house rules required that all bets be returned, because timed events must be played at least to the point that five minutes remain — in this case, the 55-minute mark — and the game fell 2:41 shy.
"The inevitable allegations of "casino conspiracy" were fueled by the fact that the books were overloaded with Wisconsin money, so the casinos stood to lose heavily. However, according to several sports book directors, they would have preferred to pay the winners for two reasons. First, the canceled bets were bad PR for the bookies. And second, the books were also heavy on bets that the "total" would be over 53, which they would have won.
"Rumors had the power outage tied to a car hitting a transformer (more grist for a conspiracy), but later reports from the power company indicated that there was no such occurrence."
Other readers shared the following recollections:
•"The most dramatic blackout I experienced was in the early '80s. I was at a convention at Ceasars. In the late afternoon, power was knocked out for the entire south Strip. When it was night, I will always remember walking out to LV Blvd and seeing a sureal sight: darkness up and down the strip. It was unreal, just seeing almost blackness with all the signs off. Yes, the table gaming areas were still on. I don't remember many slots being on. "
•"We were at the MGM many years ago and the power went out for a long time. People wouldn't leave their machines and were sitting in the dark for many hours. My wife was in the room on one of the high floors and called me on my cell to come get her. I had to take the stairs and it was full of fireman and very hot (no AC). When I got to the room (dead tired) she wanted to leave and go down stairs. So down 20 some flights of stairs we go. Many reasons were given why, the story that most often was told was the power line was cut by accident by construction people."
All your feedback also reminded us of another casino power outage in recent history, namely the November 2004 blackout at the Stratosphere that left six Japanese tourists on the X Scream ride dangling 27 feet over the edge of the 866-foot-tall observation deck for about 90 minutes. This electrical failure was apparently caused by a telephone wire crossing a power line.
And, finally, here's the last one:
Any idea what happened to the power at Bally's last week? We were crossing over the Strip from Bellagio and all the lights on the Bally's property were dark.
On Monday, April 25 at around 10:45 p.m., about ten NV Energy customers in the vicinity of the Strip and Flamingo, including Bally's and Paris hotel-casinos, experienced a 45-minute power outage, caused by a transformer fire downtown. Power was also interrupted to some areas downtown around City Hall, but no damage or injuries were reported. Here's an account we read online by someone who was staying at Paris and experienced the outage (which apparently lasted longer than the 45-minutes quoted in official statements, or perhaps that was just the effect of the cocktails) at first hand:
Here's an account from a person who experienced this outage at first hand, posted on the LVA message boards.
"After reading the question of the day today, I can give you first-hand experience! I was playing a penny slot close to the west wall near the keno area. About 10:45 pm, everything, and I mean everything, went dark. Within about five minutes, the lights came on briefly, then everything went dark again.
"After sitting there awhile, the check-in area had some lights on as did a few scattered machines throughout the casino. But there was nothing working, and the side from the table games west was still completely dark, ceiling lights and all.
"As more time passed, I could see employees walking around with their flashlights. One security guard finally made it to our area (after at least 45 minutes) to see if everything was all right. He had no idea why the emergency generators did not work. Let me tell you, it was very dark in this area!
"My husband was playing at Paris, and he received a hand pay from a slot attendant. She took his word for the credits he had in the machine. He came over to my area to stay by my machine while I went to use the restroom. The closest one with any lighted areas was on the far end of the casino. So I walked along the check in area, which had lighting, to the restroom. It was dark in there as well, but there was just enough light from the casino auxiliary lights to see.
"During this entire time, which lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes or so (I didn't keep track of time) there was no cocktail service at all. Finally, an employee was distributing bottled water to guests that wanted it.
"There was no "perk" for waiting this entire time except for a "thank you for being so patient" message from a manager who was with the slot attendant. No general announcement... nothing. I guess this trip was about "The Night the Lights Went Out at Bally's."
"The next day while we were in the Diamond Lounge, a gentleman who was trapped inside the elevator at Paris for the duration, was given a complimentary 7-day stay at Paris in a suite for his next visit. Ah, the difference between a high roller and me, a little minnow. (My husband is a low diamond, not me.)
"It was an adventure!"
We hope that answers your question satisfactorily!
