Question of the Day - 21 November 2020

Eighty-seven people died and nearly 800 were injured in the fire at the original MGM Grand (now Bally's) on Nov. 21, 1980. It 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 164 on Christmas Day, 1971.)

The MGM fire started inside a wall in a small deli off the main casino. Copper refrigeration pipes supplying coolant to a dessert display case had, for years, butted up against aluminum conduit containing electrical wires. Given the constant contact, the conduit wore away, exposing the wires. At some point, a vibration in the pipes (speculation centered on the display-case compressor, which kicked in around midnight, after its nightly 15-minute defrosting cycle) caused the bare wires to rub against each other and arc, just enough to create a spark.

An electrical fire started to smolder.

Heat rose through the wall and into the crawl space above the deli, above the casino, and all the way to the main hotel entrance more than 100 yards away.

At 7:10 a.m., a maintenance worker opened the deli door and the wall by the dessert display case burst into flame.

The fire quickly spread to the crawl space above the casino. After superheating for hours, the ceiling was so hot that when it combusted, a wall of fire rushed through the casino, moving at up to 20 feet per second -- fed by PVC pipe, wallpaper, carpet, and plastic. In fact, the fireball blew out the front of the building and engulfed the portico, incinerating a car by the door and scorching others parked nearby. The heat was so intense that it melted metal on slot machines. Investigators later determined that as many as 14 people died in the first minute of the fire.

The burning material created noxious smoke and toxic fumes.

Most of the damage caused by the fire itself occurred in the casino and restaurants on the main level, which were exempt from protection from a sprinkler system. (The exemption was for areas occupied 24 hours a day, where fire would conceivably be quickly noticed and put out with portable extinguishers; the deli, however, had been closed at night for years.) The sprinkler system did protect the high-rise tower, containing the fire to the ground floor.

But stairwells, elevator shafts, and seismic joints (structural elements designed to mitigate earthquake damage) sucked the smoke and fumes up through the hotel tower. The tower was 99% occupied that night; 5,000 people were in the building at the time. Guests on the lower floors succeeded in getting down to ground level and out of the building; many others were rescued from windows by ladder trucks. Guests on the upper floors made it to the roof, where a parade of helicopters, both police/fire department rescue choppers and private copters flown by volunteers, delivered people to safety. Most of the deaths occurred in the stairwells and on the middle floors (20 through 23) from smoke inhalation.

National standards for fire doors, walls, and sprinkler systems were raised as a direct result of the MGM Grand tragedy. Fire-resistant construction materials, fire-alarm systems, smoke and fire detectors, emergency lights and egress, standpipes in stairwells, exit signs, emergency response plans, and staff training are all part of a modern overall hotel fire-protection system. New hotels have more elements of a fire-safety plan than older ones, and hotels vary in their fire-safety consciousness. For example, most hotels spotlight their location, accommodations, dining and recreational facilities, and other amenities in an effort to accentuate the positive, as opposed to fire safety, which is perceived as a negative.

But the MGM Grand fire, as well as an arson fire at the Las Vegas Hilton in February 1981, less than three months later that killed eight people and injured 400, should remind us all that fire safety is a bona fide concern that requires our constant vigilance.