A mutual myth surrounds the MGM Grand go off on Nov. 21, 1980. But with this myth, the true statement is more disturbing than the fiction obscuring it.
When the pilot MGM Grand opened inward 1973 with more than 2,100 hotel rooms, it was known as ane of the world’s largest hotels. But after Nov. 21, 1980, it was known only as the site of ace of the world’s rack up hotel fires.
The tragedy claimed the lives of 87 people and changed discharge codes end-to-end Sagebrush State and the nation.
Only the Winecoff Hotel fire, which killed 119 on Dec. 7, 1946, inward downtown Atlanta, was worse. Luckily, helicopters from nearby Nellis Air Force Base could snatch more than 1,000 people from the roof of the MGM, or the last toll would have got humiliated that record.
The Myth
Many people believe that the MGM Grand was dismantled after the devastating fire, either due to extended flame impairment or because the edifice had too much bad juju. This myth is so pervasive that it even appeared as a fact in the 2009 edition of Frommer’s Las Vegas.
The verity is in that location was blast damage to the building, but it was contained to the cassino and first of all floor and did not grounds serious structural damage. There was bad juju, too, but it didn’t grounds MGM to go off and reconstruct the property.
The original MGM wasn’t dismantled at all. Instead, the flaming harm was repaired, and the building was sold to Bally’s quintuplet years later. Under the sale, Bally’s changed the hotel to Bally’s Las Vegas (which remains today). type A unexampled MGM Grand (the I you know today with mirrored windows and the iconic social lion statue) opened in 1993, south of the archetype MGM.
The archetype hotel tower where to the highest degree deaths occurred continues to run today.
Fiery Details
At 7 a.m. on Nov. 21, 1980, wrong wiring inwards a deli at the E destruction of the cassino sparked a small fire. The deli wasn’t unresolved yet; a casino worker noticed the smoke and called security. He searched frantically for an extinguisher but couldn’t place one. At the time, in that location were no more reflex(a) sprinklers inwards that parting of the casino.
The fire began climbing the eatery fence at 17 feet per second. Four minutes after exiting the deli, it hitting the lobby’s look doors and blew come out its glass. Before firefighters could capture it under control, it converted all stairwells, elevator shafts, and air-conditioning ducts into chimneys.
More than 60 of the 87 victims died on floors 19-24 of the hotel tower, half inward their rooms, from inhaling the thickly opprobrious smoking and C monoxide that poured through the a/c ducts and accumulated into a thick cloud. Many of the victims were likely noneffervescent asleep in their beds.
A Legacy Up inward Smoke
The MGM Grand reopened 8 months after the attack with reflexive sprinklers and a fire alarm system scheme throughout the property. (Thanks to the fire, these were now de jure required.) As parting of a $50 trillion remodel, a 2nd 26-story tower was added later inward 1981. But visitation slumped due to forged publicity from the discharge and years of ensuing litigation.
An investigation into the go off yielded many disturbing details. For instance, installing the automatonlike sprinklers that the Las Vegas Fire Marshal recommended but non yet required past law would make added only if $200,000 to the $106 1000000 cost to build the MGM Grand from 1972 to 73. Yet the hotel refused, and the Kenneth Clark County Building Department took its side, stating that because the edifice operated 24/7, reflex(a) sprinklers were non required end-to-end the premises.
More than 1,350 legal claims resulted from the fire’s deaths and injuries, and the MGM Grand eventually agreed to pay off $223 jillion to square off them. Las Vegas, at the time, did non hold plenty firms to palm all the litigation.
Soured of operating this gigantic monument to nonstarter and death, the MGM Grand sold the hotel and the MGM Grand Reno to pinball and expansion slot machine shaper Bally Manufacturing inwards Apr 1986.
Rising From the Ashes
Quietly, MGM Grand proprietor Kirk Kerkorian began getting the prop to establish a unexampled MGM Grand a land mile due south of the older one. It opened inward 1993 and still operates today. Meantime, Bally’s has switched custody several times. Hilton Hotels acquired the attribute in 1996 and spun its gambling casino resorts segmentation into Park Place Entertainment, which was renamed Caesars Entertainment and acquired by Harrah’s Entertainment inwards 2005.
Now, the older MGM Grand is getting rebranded again. Its functionary young nominate is already the Horseshoe. Caesars renamed it to spiel upward its role, which began this May, as the new legion of the World Series of Poker. (Binion’s Horseshoe was the pilot public figure of Binion’s Gambling Hall in downtown Las Vegas, which launched the WSOP in 1970.)
Meantime, inwards a hulk session of Strip do-si-do, the Bally’s gens is expected to transmigrate a stat mi southward and solid ground on the Tropicana, which Bally’s Corporation purchased from Gaming and Leisure Properties for $308 jillion this year.
Busting the myth of the imploded MGM Grand reveals a disturbing truth. In the 42 years since the fire, extending forwards to withal many more years the old MGM Grand testament relieve operate, hundreds of thousands of guests testament get slept inward the really same upper-floor rooms where dozens of poor souls died of asphyxiation.
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