The MGM Fire

Introduction

It's something you lose sleep over and hope will never happen: a fire roaring through your building. While every facility professional will do what he or she can to ensure that a fire never begins in the first place, the next step is knowing how to minimize its spread. Most people are familiar with the basics of fire suppression (sprinklers, fire extinguishers, etc.), but the passive fire protection that actually contains a fire at its point of origin can be invisible and nearly forgotten - until the day you come to truly appreciate and depend on it. Passive fire protection (PFP), despite its name, is always at work. Based on compartmentation of fire and preventing collapse through structural fire resistance, when properly installed and maintained, your building's passive fire protection can save lives and assets, and the building itself.

Analysis On Nov. 21, 1980, fire ripped through the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. Six hundred seventy-nine (679) people were injured, and 84 died in the fire. Openings in vertical shafts and seismic joints acted as chimneys, spreading smoke and heat all the way through the 26th floor. Guests found out about the fire by seeing smoke or via others who told them. The hotel's alarm system was destroyed before fire alarms could activate (Best, pp 34-278).

Hotel Operations

A new guest room wing was under construction wesf of the Ziegfeld Room on the date of the fire. The 800-room addition was not connected to the hotel complex at the time of the fire and the new construction was not involved in the fire. Construction workers who participated in fire fighting and rescue operations at the MGM were from this construction project. The major entertainment and dining facilities at the MGM Hotel were on the Casino and Arcade levels. The Main Casino was located on the lobby floor with roulette, blackjack (twenty-one), craps, baccarat and slot machines. Keno was played in the 200-seat Keno Lounge, as well as in The Deli, the Orleans Coffee House, and the cocktail lounges. Electronic Keno scoreboards showing game information and recording the numbers being drawn for each game were located in restaurant and lounge areas. The entertainment rooms included the Celebrity Room, a 1,200-seat nightclub; the Ziegfeld Room, a 900-seat showroom with moving stages; and the MGM Theatre, a movie theater with tiered seating. The two showrooms off the Main Casino were closed at the time of the fire and reportedly were not scheduled to reopen for several weeks. The jai alai fronton, located on the east end of the hotel complex, provided tiered seating for 2,176 spec- tators. The Main Casino operated 24 hours a day, as do ost of the other casinos on "The Strip (Buerk et al, pp 599-641)." The restaurants — Cafe Gigi, Caruso's, and Barrymores' were open during dinner hours. The Orleans Cof- fee House operated 24 hours a day; however, The Deli was no longer operating around the clock and was closed on the morning of November 21, ...