The MGM Grand Hotel Disaster | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror

1 year ago

"On the 21st of November, 1980, a fire began on the first floor of the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada..."

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Transcript

00:00On the 21st of November 1980 a fire began on the first floor of the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino

00:18in Las Vegas, Nevada. Firefighters were quickly in attendance, and through a coordinated effort

00:25were able to contain and then extinguish the flames before they could spread to rooms where

00:30guests were sleeping. Only a relatively small part of the hotel actually burned, but a flaw

00:36in the design of the building meant that 85 guests, many of whom were staying on floors

00:42completely untouched by flame, lost their lives. The MGM Grand Hotel and Casino was built by Metro

00:51Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. It was intended to be a luxurious resort inspired by the hotel in one of

00:57their feature films, and indeed the Grand lived up to its name. The hotel was fitted with chandeliers

01:05and marble statues, and was home to one of the world's largest casinos, 25 bars, eight restaurants,

01:12and its own private movie theater which would, of course, screen only MGM films and features.

01:19The building housed a staggering 2,100 rooms laid out across 26 floors. The lower floors were taken

01:27up with restaurants, a convention center, and the massive Grand Casino, while the majority of floors

01:33above that were dedicated to guest accommodation. When the fire began it did so on the first floor

01:40of the building in a restaurant called The Deli. Subsequent investigation would reveal that the

01:47cause of the initial fire was a faulty refrigerator. The flames, small at first, had time to grow

01:54considerably before they were discovered at around 7 10am. Tim Connor, a maintenance worker at the

02:02hotel, stumbled across the flames as he was checking the deli for broken tiles. He immediately

02:07called hotel security and then set about trying to fight the fire with a handheld extinguisher.

02:13After being physically thrown to the ground twice by waves of air pressure and billowing smoke,

02:19though, Connor admitted defeat and began to assist with the evacuation.

02:25He made this decision just in time. Just minutes after the fire was discovered

02:29flashover occurred. The flames, feeding on an influx of oxygen, swept through the restaurant

02:35and spread out across the casino floor, consuming the entire space in little more than 20 seconds.

02:42Guests in the casino had just a minute or two of warning, time which several of them used to

02:48gather up their chips and other belongings before running for the exit. While the building was

02:55fitted with a fire alarm system it was disabled by the fire before it could be activated. As a backup

03:02guests would have been given evacuation orders via a public address system or via their in-room

03:07telephones, but again smoke forced staff to evacuate the telephone control room before this

03:14could be done. Guests in their rooms, therefore, mostly learned about the fire when they saw smoke

03:20billowing outside their windows or when they heard shouting and commotion in the corridors outside

03:26their rooms. Some only realized something was amiss when helicopters, drawn by the huge plumes

03:32of smoke rising from the MGM Grand, started circling the building. A few lucky guests were

03:39able to evacuate before the smoke and fumes in the corridors became too thick to risk it.

03:45Those who did make a run for it were faced with challenging conditions.

03:49The lifts were out of action, their cables destroyed by the fire. The interior stairwells

03:55were designed to prevent guests sneaking from one floor to another. Guests could enter the stairwell

04:01from any floor but could only exit the stairwell at ground level. With smoke permeating the air

04:08guests were understandably nervous to lock themselves in the stairwell, and so in many

04:14cases propped open the stairwell door behind them so that they could flee back to their rooms if

04:19necessary. This had the unfortunate effect of allowing smoke to enter and fill the stairwells

04:26much quicker than it otherwise might. As for those who remained in their rooms their prospects

04:32were equally stark. With the interior of the hotel filling with smoke many looked to their windows

04:38for salvation. Several guests made makeshift ropes out of bedsheets or tried to clamber down the

04:45exterior of the building. Some were successful, managing to scramble down from their floor to a

04:51lower, less smoky floor from which they could make their escape. At least one guest, however, slipped

04:58and fell to their death. Seeing this police on the ground shouted for people to stay put in their

05:04rooms and wait to be rescued. A small number of guests were rescued by construction workers who

05:11risked their lives to travel up in a tiny electric lift and pull people out through windows. They made

05:18multiple journeys up and down the burning building until they'd inhaled too much smoke to

05:24continue. Other guests inside the hotel, desperately in need of air, broke their windows to allow more

05:31ventilation... only for smoke from outside to swirl in and begin suffocating them. The matter was made

05:38worse by helicopters swooping in to rescue people from the roof, with the rotors creating a

05:43downdraft that sent smoke rushing into broken windows. The fire was extinguished within a matter

05:51of hours, never having traveled beyond the first floor of the building. While the flames had remained

05:57contained the smoke had not. It accumulated on the upper floors, and it was there, furthest from the

06:05flames, that the highest death toll was found. Many people died in their rooms, with some using lipstick

06:13to scribble goodbye messages on their mirrors. Some people survived by jamming towels around the

06:19edges of their doors and keeping their windows tightly sealed. Indeed, some survivors were totally

06:26unaware of the magnitude of the disaster. Firefighters painstakingly clearing the building,

06:32one floor at a time, encountered a couple dead in one another's arms in one room, and a couple alive

06:40and drinking tequila to pass the time while they waited for rescue in the next. Many of the

06:46survivors from the disaster were evacuated by helicopter. It was a safer option, with smoke

06:52lingering in the lower parts of the building even after the flames had been extinguished.

06:58The dead were carried out as soon as it was possible to do so. They quickly filled up the

07:03available morgue space, and so refrigerated trucks were brought in to store the bodies until they

07:08could be identified. Treatment centers for the almost 650 injured were set up in other nearby

07:16casinos... spaces which were only reluctantly vacated by the hardcore gamblers who had remained

07:22in situ playing slot machines while the Grand burned across the street from them. In total

07:2885 people died as a result of the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino fire, 75 of them as a result of smoke

07:36inhalation. An investigation in the aftermath of the disaster revealed not just the initial cause

07:44of the fire but also a host of regulatory failures. Fire safety inspectors had flagged

07:50up a number of serious issues with the building earlier in the year. At the time of the fire

07:56only one in five of the problems identified had been addressed. There were, for example,

08:03no sprinklers in the casino area or in the deli where the fire began. These areas had been designed

08:10to be open and occupied 24 hours a day, and so didn't legally have to have a sprinkler system,

08:17as it was reasoned that a fire would be noticed and extinguished as soon as it started. Over the

08:23years, though, the usage of these spaces had changed. The deli was no longer a 24-hour-a-day

08:31eatery, and yet no sprinklers had been installed. The situation had changed, but the systems in place

08:38had not. Furthermore, faulty seals in the hotel's air conditioning system allowed smoke to circulate

08:45throughout the entire building rather than keeping it contained on one floor. The alarm system had

08:52also been out of date and inadequate for a building of the MGM Grand's size. These were all things

08:59which would not have been permitted in a more modern hotel, but the MGM Grand had been constructed

09:04at a time when standards were much more lax. Even after the fire one governor insisted that it wasn't

09:12fair or practical to insist that older buildings be brought up to codes that didn't even exist when

09:18they were built. For a brief time this was an issue around which there was a great deal of debate...

09:25until February next year when a fire at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel killed eight people.

09:32The combined impact of the two tragedies was enough to overcome any opposition, and it was

09:38made a legal requirement that even older buildings conform to modern fire safety codes. The MGM Grand

09:46Hotel and Casino was rebuilt and refurbished, complete with state-of-the-art alarm systems.

09:52It exists to this day, welcoming hundreds of thousands of guests each year.

09:58Thanks to the changes which followed the disaster in 1980 hotel management feels justified in

10:04claiming it to be one of the safest hotels in the world.

10:21you

The MGM Grand Hotel Disaster | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror

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