Two distant, black columns of smoke caught John Pappageorge's eye as he drove to work on a crisp, 38-degree morning in November 1980.
Pappageorge, then a deputy chief with the Clark County Fire Department, wondered if the smoke might be coming from a pile of tires on fire. Or was it a building?
Before he could make a call on his two-way radio to find out, a voice from Fire Control crackled over the speakers.
"We have a report of a fire in a building in The Deli of the MGM, entrance No. 2. That's entrance No. 2 to the MGM for The Deli."
Within seconds, Pappageorge heard the first firefighters reporting in over the radio. But he had no idea what that day was about to bring — the second-deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history.
When it was over, the Nov. 21, 1980, fire killed 85 people and injured nearly 700 more. It could have been worse — there were 4,000 to 5,000 people in the building, including 3,400 guests.
The tragedy became a wake-up call that eventually spurred new safety codes and regulations for high-rise buildings that were adopted nationwide.
But on the day of the blaze, the resort resembled a war zone. Helicopters swirled through heavy smoke, plucking victims from the roof. Firefighters swarmed - 550 in all. Body after body was pulled from the building, so many that the refrigerated morgue at the Coroner's Office couldn't hold them.
Despite the passage of 32 years, the sights and sounds of the day remain scorched in the collective memories of the firefighters who were there.
"I absolutely believe what they did way back then was heroic," Pappageorge said. "The fact that they went in and got so many people out was unbelievable ... God knows how many more would have died if they hadn't have done that job. They are absolutely heroes."
First a spark, then a fireball
Sometime in the early morning hours, before The Deli opened, an electrical wire began sparking behind a wall of the restaurant.
How long it went unnoticed is not known, said Lorne Lomprey, who was then a captain and fire investigator.
The monster first revealed itself after 7 a.m., when flames broke out of the wall and into a waitresses' service station at The Deli.
A kitchen worker who had just arrived for work had a chance to put out the fire with a hose. But as he sprayed the flames, he was warned by another Deli worker not to put water on the electrical fire.
The blaze grew quickly, devouring everything in its path inside the ground-floor restaurant — wall coverings, cabinets, chairs and dining booths. As the fire grew out of control, the security staff called the fire department at 7:16 a.m. And a public address operator in the security office downstairs was instructed to make an announcement to evacuate the casino.
The operator made the announcement twice for emphasis, prompting those in the casino to grab their chips, cash and belongings and run to the exits. Casino operators and others working below the gaming floor described the noise above them sounding like a "herd of elephants." The operators were told to leave.
But high above the casino floor, those in the hotel tower had no idea the mayhem that was unfolding. In the confusion, no alarm was manually sounded to warn guests in the tower.
By 7:18 a.m., two minutes after the call came in to Station 11, Bert Sweeney and a few other firefighters from the station arrived at the MGM Grand and entered the hotel.
Sweeney, now 66, remembers getting 40 or 50 feet inside. "That's when we saw the finger of smoke coming out of The Deli," he said.
Sweeney saw people running away from the smoke to the exit, but there were still some people on the casino floor.
Then, Sweeney said, "we saw the fireball come out of The Deli. ... It bounced once off the casino floor at the very end of the casino and went up, and I think it hit the ceiling."
Sweeney looked at his helmet. The heat had melted part of his face visor into a clump of plastic. Looking through the doors, firefighters could see an inferno of swirling flames.
Back into the belly of the fire
Carrying heavy, 2 1/2-inch water lines, the firefighters fought their way back into the burning casino.
As they worked their way inside, Sweeney felt glops of something falling on him from above. The tiles and adhesive on the ceiling were melting.
"It was kind of a weird sensation. It was melting like gum," Sweeney said.
Jerry Bendorf, then a 35-year-old rookie fire captain, was stunned by the scene in front of him as he arrived. The pressure from the casino fireball had gone into the sewer and blown the covers off the manholes on Flamingo Road, causing smoke to pour from the openings. Flames consuming the valet canopy had spread to the line of empty vehicles underneath it.
Then came, perhaps, the most terrifying sight.
As debris rained down from above — shards of window glass — Bendorf looked up. Frightened hotel guests, waving and yelling for help, were on their balconies and leaning out of smashed windows as smoke poured through the tower.
Firefighters shouted back, urging people not to jump.
That's about the time Bill Lowe, then a 37-year-old engineer paramedic, entered from the front entrance to help put out the remaining smaller fires scattered about the casino floor.
There were bodies all around. Eighteen people were found dead in the casino. City firefighters, who also responded, "had pointed out and said they'd found a cocktail waitress who was burned and to just make sure you didn't step on her," Lowe said.
Disaster on the upper floors
According to separate reports by the National Fire Protection Association and the Clark County Fire Department, firefighters confined the blaze to the casino level in a little more than an hour. But while the fire was being contained, the worst part of the tragedy had already been playing out in the hotel's T-shaped tower. The tower had been drawing up the black smoke like a chimney, sending deadly fumes into the hallways of thousands of guests who were just waking up.
Because no alarms were sounded, most guests didn't realize what was happening until they heard or saw fire engines, smelled smoke or heard people yelling and knocking on doors.
Many guests in lower levels managed to get downstairs when they realized the hotel was on fire, coming outside to find firefighters and emergency medical personnel waiting to help them.
John Jersey, then a 33-year-old firefighter paramedic, and his partner, Jim Perkins, methodically combed for survivors through the north tower, carrying only a few bottles of air. Room by room, they pounded on doors, kicking them in if they weren't answered and making sure they got people out.
"You just kick into a mode and do what you were trained to do. There is no thought about what is going on outside the fire," Jersey said.
Jersey hadn't seen so many bodies since he was a Green Beret reconnaissance specialist in Vietnam. He and Perkins found bodies in rooms, in halls, in the elevator lobby. They were on beds, in corners of their rooms and in bathtubs. Some had their faces covered with towels.
"I think we tagged about 42 people altogether," said Perkins, who also says he is still haunted by the memories.
The difference for survival seemed to be whether guests had broken out the windows or opened their hallway doors. If they opened their doors, smoke would come in from the hallways. If they opened windows, smoke might come in from the floors below — or be blown in by the rotors of the large Air Force helicopters landing on the roof.
"The ones that kept doors shut and had stuffed towels under doors (and into room vents), they were OK," Perkins said.
To search, the two would crawl below the layer of smoke on one side of the hallway and knock loudly on each door. If no one opened it, they would kick it in. Once in the room, they would search in the bathrooms, under the beds and in the closets. Then they would go to the other side of the hallway and do the same thing in each room. It took 30 to 45 minutes per floor, Jersey said.
One floor in particular still brings back disturbing memories for Perkins, who was then 31 years old.
"We saw a big pile of people with their arms wrapped around each other in front of the elevator," he said. "There were probably 10 to 12 people who had died in each other's arms. It's something I've had nightmares about ever since."
Perkins remembers going into one room and finding the bodies of two people who had succumbed to the toxic smoke and fumes.
"And the very next room, there were two couples who were sitting at the coffee table drinking tequila and partying," he said, remembering the ironic scene.
Most of the survivors could walk, but Perkins and Jersey had to carry many people to the roof above the 23rd floor.
Once on the roof, the survivors were evacuated by helicopter. The Air Force dispatched a heavy-lift helicopter and other choppers that evacuated 300 people from the roof and another dozen trapped on balconies. The firefighters would then go down to the next floor and get another group.
In some rooms, Bendorf, the rookie fire captain, found that victims had managed to scribble messages to loved ones on the mirror before taking their last breath.
Firefighter Skip Miller remembers carrying out about 10 bodies. He put them on gurneys and took them to the roof, where they were loaded onto helicopters and taken to the county morgue.
"Every now and then, one would slide off the gurney. And it would be total silence because we had to put them back on," Miller said. "And the worst part about it was they looked like they were just sleeping because there was no trauma. That's what made it pretty sad."
The aftermath and recovery
In the end, investigators traced the source of the fire to faulty wiring in the kitchen. And because most of the fatalities were caused by the way the fire and smoke spread so quickly, county and state lawmakers retooled fire safety and building codes from top to bottom.
Hotel operators were required to install sprinklers everywhere in their buildings — there were none in The Deli kitchen at the MGM Grand. New codes made sure barriers would keep smoke from spreading from floor to floor.
Today, county fire and building inspectors say Las Vegas' resorts are among the safest, if not the safest, in the world.
After the fire, MGM restored the hotel, which sustained about $50 million damage. On July 30, 1981, the hotel reopened — this time with a $5 million fire safety system that exceeded the new fire safety codes in place.
Less than two weeks later, the new system would be put to a real-life test, according to the book "The Day the MGM Grand Hotel Burned," by Deirdre Coakley with Hank Greenspun, Gary C. Gerard and the staff of the Las Vegas Sun.
"When sparks from a welder's torch caused insulation material to smolder, automatic alarms went off in rooms on two upper floors and guests were told via the public-address system to remain in their rooms and tune in to a closed-circuit TV channel for instructions," the book said. "The incident was minor, there was no evacuation, and the new fire-safety system worked exactly as it was meant to do."
As for the men who fought the fire, seven of them came together for a reunion recently to talk about their memories from that day. For most, it was the first time they had talked to each other about what they had seen and done that day. The reunion was cathartic for some, but overwhelming for one.
Up to that point, Bert Sweeney, described by his friends as a "Godzilla" for his physical strength as a young man, had no trouble talking about the fire. But after listening to his fellow firefighters tell their stories, he fell silent.
When it was his turn to talk, his voice cracked and he drooped his head, unable to continue.
He apologized. But he had no reason to.
Every man in the room had been there before.
Saturday 24 November 2012
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/32-years-later-firefighters-recall-fatal-MGM-fire-4062179.php#ixzz2D9QDKkFW
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