Poignant task for survivors of Las Vegas disaster

Press, 24 November 1980, Page 1

Poignant task for survivors of Las Vegas disaster

NZPA-Reuter Las Vegas

Survivors of the MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas, in which at least 83 people died, were allowed back into the blackened hulk of the 26storey building yesterday for the first time. Firemen led them across the gutted portico to their rooms to see if any of their personal belongings remained.

Some, inquiring anxiously about friends, were told by a receptionist at a temporary desk: “I have to inform you that your friend did not escape. We can make arrangements for you to see the body if you so wish.”

The survivors picked their way across blackened carpets and broken glass, where panic-stricken guests had smashed windows to try to escape the clouds of smoke that billowed up ventilator shafts and swirled under doors,

suffocating many of the victims.

The fire, on Saturday morning (New Zealand time), never spread beyond the ground floor. Most of the victims on upper floors were killed by the toxic smoke fumes, fire officials said.

Hospital spokesmen said that 534 people were treated for heart attacks, smoke inhalation, and cuts, mainly from broken glass. The fire started quietly above a delicatessen ceiling on the hotel’s main floor before dawn on Friday (local time), said the Clark County Fire Chief, Mr Roy Parrish. “This was a classic case of a fire that built and burned. It was definitely a killer,” Mr Parrish said. “We have determined the original of the fire to be in the attic, between floors above the deli. It was cause by an electrical fault.”

He said that if most guests had remained in their rooms, instead of panicking and trying to flee, there would have been more survivors. The director of the Las Vegas Building and Safety department, Mr Robert Walker, said that there had been no general fire-safety examination of the hotel, the biggest in Las Vegas, since 1974, the year after it was built. He said that there was no general safety maintenance programme for Las Vegas hotels, although safety standards were usually inspected, when hotels changed ownership. The local building inspector, .Mr Lewis Brown, said that building codes brought into force since the MGM Grand Hotel was built required ■ an automatic fire alarm on each floor and a smoke detector in each room. However, these laws did not affect buildings, such

as the MGM Grand Hotel, approved under earlier building codes, he said.

Mr Parrish said that only three of the hotel’s floors had automatic sprinkler systems and there were no smoke detectors, but all floors were under 24-hour supervision by trained firemen. t Reporters allowed into the ground-floor casino saw a charred mass of poker machines melted by the intense heat.

The fire engulfed the casino, which is 144 m long and bigger than a football field, in 10 minutes, fire officials said. ? .

The Hollywood Walk of Fame, containing pictures of hundreds of film stars, was reduced to an alleyway of twisted metal and charred photgraphs. The wheel of fortune,’ where gamblers bet on the spin of the wheel, was buckled by the heat. Aftermath of camage, Page 8