Horror of last moments

Press, 24 November 1980, Page 8

Horror of last moments

NZPA-Reuter Las Vegasi Huddled in a corner of ; their room, one couple em- i ;braced a last time as they] choked to death on the thick' smoke billowing through the! MGM Grand Hotel, which! burned in Lus Vegas on Saturday (New Zealand time). A woman clawed vainly at the wall as she tried to raise herself to reach the lift but-; ton. She died, but the claw marks remain. In another room, a woman scrawled “HELP” on her window in lipstick, but no help came. Her body was ( found nearby. Yet another couple had pronpeo up a photograph taken only hours before as thev dined in the luxury of the swank hotel-casino. They watched it as the acrid smoke choked away their lives.

A waiter who had been serving breakfast was found sprawled across a dish-laden table in another room. The guests had fled. i These were among the scenes recounted by Father Glenn Smith, a Roman Catholic priest who groped through the wreckage with firemen, administering last rites to bodies they found.

They were scenes that will haunt Father Smith the rest of his life.

“The victims — out of their noses and mouths was coming black, like soot,” he said.

"People were hanging from balconies by sheets tied together,” said Dennis Casey, a Pittsburgh advertising executive who carried ap elderly woman down 21 flights of stairs to safety. "Tire makeshift ropes

ididn’t always hold, droppings ’some people to their death.” il i “I awoke to find my roornjl J filled with smoke,” Mr’l i Casey said. “I went to the ; 'window, and saw a woman! l ‘fall just outside.” j I “It was death, . absolute; 'death there. I knew people i were dying,” said Keith Bea-!] verton of Woodland Hills.! California. il Mr Beaverton said he;< heard screaming and opened]] ;the door of his seventeenth- < floor room to find the hall-i: way filled with smoke and] disoriented people milling i around, not knowing what to 1 do. "The smoke was so thick s that I was having trouble ( breathing,” he said. “I was twitching. I thought maybe I 1 was going to.die.” ! But Mr Beaverton was 1 lucky. Firemen found him ( and carried him outside. He ] was revived with oxygen and sent to hospital. Vincent Goodman and his 1 wife, of New Orleans, were ] watching an early newscast ‘ when the fire broke out. iThey dashed down five flights of stairs with hun- . dreds of other people. ] “We saw a lot of uncon- 1 scious people in the hall . . I’m shaking now. My knees are shaking.” , At a survivor centre, a • young Mexican man who, made it to safety with his ] wife, said in Spanish, “It’s a ( miracle we are alive, mama. I’m crying for joy.” Survivors of the fire, clutching their room . keys, gathered at the ravaged building yesterday to reclaim their belongings as reporters were taken on a grim tour of the charred casino. Ari emotional scene erupted as fire engines out-

side the hotel suddenly! ibegan sounding sirens and;' 'took off — apparently for al! fire elsewhere. Hearing the ; sirens, survivors clung tob !each other and some ap-y peared on the verge of tears. I "Oh, no, not again” one] woman ..cried, holding herp ' hands to her face. . The guests of the ill-fated 1 i hotel, wearing borrowed’ ; clothes, milled in the car ' |park, waiting for fire offi-' icials to declare the building Isafe to enter. .• ■ . , < Authorities took reporters 1 in the front door to the ( once-lavfeh casino, which i was now a ghostly ruin of 1 slot machine skeletons and charred gaming tables. 1 Cameramen lugged equip- : ment through the debris- ] strewn casino, where ash and rubble lay in thick piles 1 on the floor and singed i chandeliers hung askew from the ceiling girders. “This is eerie. Its abso- i lutely like a haunted house,” : one of the 20 reporters said I as the crowd tiptoes over firehoses „ that snaked through the casino. ! Firemen held lanterns andl hotel security guards ringed : the cavernous casino, which : was cordoned off with red I ropes. . ,? s, 1 "Be, careful. .W.e>‘ don’t; want anyone to ’get hurt,” | Fire Captain Ralph Dinsman said as • he conducted ' the < tour. He warned that chunks ’ of the ceiling still might fall. ’ For the most part. Captain I

Dinsman and his entourage 'were silent or spoke in i hushed whispers. Normally ■ noisy gambling machines, .appearing almost fossilised 'with their once-gleaming finashes burned off, also stood in ghostly silence. A moist, .acrid smell of smoke and water hung ■ in the air in the darkened 128 m-long room. In the centre, also blackened was the no-longer-whirling wheel of fortune. One man who was gambling there when the fire broke out told how the early-morning hum of gambling activity suddenly turned to flame. "I was at the blackjack table,” said Ray Noble of Shreveport, Los Angeles., "Suddenly the pit boss said, ‘let’s get the hell out. of here,’ and everybody started running. It was a madhouse. “I grabbed some of my chips and ran. A. guy at my table had about $9OOO in stacks of chips. To my knowledge, he got it all.” Mr Noble said that ,he and his brother-in-law, Melvin Richie, of Mount Pleasant, jTexas, had awakened early and left their twenty-second-floor roorp to get some coffee, then decided to stop at the tables. He said that many people on their floor perished. “I guess It was our lucky day,” Mr Richie said. "What we won was much more valuable than money. A dead billionaire ain’t got much.”