MGM Grand Fire

Las Vegas was always a little dangerous, but most of the time, the fear was about losing all your money—not your life. In Sin City, glitz and glamour is the number one priority of hoteliers. Unfortunately, by the 1970s, Las Vegas was experiencing a bit of a downturn in visitors. 

During the 1970s, the MGM Grand Resort was one of the hottest places to go in town. It also happened to be a resort governed by extremely lax business codes. While the resort’s exterior was designed to be fireproof, the interior was basically a free reign of luck and negligence. 

There were no state laws encouraging business owners to fireproof stairwells, add sprinklers, or even use materials that weren’t flammable. Even wiring was left to just “do its own thing,” to a point. 

On November 21, 1980, A Fire Broke Out in the MGM Grand Hotel.

Did you ever have a morning where you felt something off but couldn’t figure out what went wrong until it was too late? One might assume that at least one worker felt that way on the day of the fire. 

Prior to opening up the MGM’s deli, a worker noted the smell of smoke, but he couldn’t see a flame. He kept working until the fire grew too quickly to ignore. He called security and tried to find an extinguisher but couldn’t.

By the time people saw the fire growing, it was too late. The official diagnosis? The fire was sparked by a faulty wire in one of the small deli restaurants that the MGM had installed. Due to lax building codes, they never added an extinguisher. 

The fire spread at a jaw-dropping rate of 17 feet per second, ripping through the main floor of the MGM and making escape incredibly difficult. The flame and fumes trapped dozens of people throughout the hotel. 

Fighting The Fire Proved Difficult.

Once the fire began to make itself more visible, Las Vegas firefighters were called to the scene. The Clark County firefighting team was then joined by construction workers who did what they could to get visitors and hotel guests to fresh air. 

60 of the 87 people who died in the conflagration perished between the 16th and 24th floors as a result of smoke inhalation from the toxic fumes that remained trapped in the building. Many of the surviving hotel guests gathered on the roof of the hotel tower. 

Thankfully, helicopters were practicing some moves at the Nellis Air Force Base. Upon hearing of the fire, they rushed to aid and pulled over 1,000 people off the original hotel tower rooftop—saving them from the deadly smoke. 

Had helicopters not saved guests from the rooftop, even more, would have perished from the thick black smoke. 

The MGM Grand Brought A New Conversation To The World Of Safety

By the time the fire had been fought, 87 people had died, and hundreds were injured. It became a major scandal around the world, giving rise to a new level of safety standards for hotels throughout Las Vegas, Nevada, and the rest of the United States. 

Law firms were quick to point out that the MGM Grand’s architecture was pretty foul in terms of safety. It became clear that faulty wiring was the least of the hotel’s problems. Fire safety experts noticed the following issues:

• There were no maps showing where the closest exits were. This used to be commonplace. Exit maps are now a must in all hotel rooms.
• Extinguishers were not as frequently found as they should be. Had there been a fire extinguisher in the deli restaurant, the fire would never have actually spread to the hotel or casino floor. 
• The sprinkler system was virtually nonexistent. Sprinklers were only really used in the basement and the first-floor banquet hall of the casino. These are also the areas where fires are least likely to spread. It would have only cost $200,000 to install sprinklers throughout the hotel—which cost upward of $10 million. The hoteliers still refused, citing cost.
• There were almost no fire alarms installed in the hotel. None. Apparently, this was okay in the 1970s. There were no carbon monoxide alarms or smoke detectors, either.

Over 1,000 different lawsuits were filed related to the tragic fire. The fire at MGM Grand was so incredibly litigated that Las Vegas didn’t even have enough courts to handle all the individual suits being filed. Clark County’s offices were clogged with lawsuits.

Eventually, the state of Nevada agreed that the fire that took so many people’s lives was preventable.

A common myth surrounding the MGM Grand fire is that the tragic blaze made the hotel too stigmatized to actually remain in business. It’s often said that the MGM Grand was demolished in favor of creating a new casino. However, this is not true. 

The original MGM Grand was cleared of smoke damage and was given all the newest upgrades that help keep hotels safe today. This included a new sprinkler system, new fire alarms, additional smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, and exit maps. 

However, the MGM Grand couldn’t actually keep their original building. The lawsuits from victims and those evacuated were too much for the company to handle, so they had to sell the building to Bally’s. The OG MGM Grand is now the front of Bally’s (now named the Horseshoe Hotel & Casino). 

Oddly enough, people have started to report some strange happenings at the old MGM Grand Hotel. After the fire happened, hotel guests claimed to see shadowy figures and disembodied feet around their room on the upper floors where the guests had died. 

It’s also said that there is an elevator that hotel workers won’t enter as a result of the people who were killed when the lift got stuck in the shaft during the fire. Whether or not the elevator shafts are haunted remains to be seen. 

There is, and if you have any concerns about what you saw on the street, don’t panic. That really is an MGM Grand Casino, you see. While the original hotel was turned into a Bally’s years ago, MGM didn’t stop there. Let’s get a closer look at the aftermath of the fire.

Along with selling the burned casino and hotel, MGM Grand had to pay a whopping $225 million to victims who were injured or who died in the fire. 

MGM also built another hotel and casino a mile south of their original venue. Unlike the original, this venue was fully equipped with classic fire safety gear from the get-go. As it turns out, losing that much money will shake a company into compliance. 

The new MGM Grand reopened, but the memories of what happened to the original hotel remained a major cornerstone of Las Vegas lore. Word has it that it took MGM years to actually have the brand recover from the reputational hit that came with the fire.

The story doesn’t end there, either. 

Some also claim that the spirits of guests who were killed migrated to the new MGM Grand buildings in the hope of preventing another fire. However, that seems far-fetched, even for those of us who believe in ghosts.

• The MGM Grand Hotel fire happened in November of 1980. 
• The fire was caused by a frayed wire in a deli attached to the floor of the casino, and it spread rapidly throughout the building. 
• The fire killed over 75 people, mostly through carbon monoxide poisoning. 
• Helicopters were able to save over 1,000 people who made their way up to the roof, preventing a far worse tragedy. 
• Over 200 firefighters helped put the blaze out from affected buildings. 
• Lawyers agreed that the MGM fire was a sign that better fire safety codes were needed. 
• The devastating fire led MGM to sell their original building to Bally’s and construct a new casino a mile away from the old MGM Grand hotel. 
• This fire is considered to be one of the worst tragedies in Las Vegas history. 
• Many people believe the old Bally’s building to be haunted by the people killed in the fire.