Vegas hotels prepared for fire, earthquakes

Wednesday, Nov. 17, 1999 | 11:10 a.m.

Las Vegas has experienced its share of acts of God and man-caused disasters - fire, floods, earthquakes, etc. - and the operators of skyscraping hotel-casinos have weathered such incidents and learned from their mistakes.

Last month an earthquake in the Southern California desert with a magnitude 7.1 caused the mighty Strip towers to sway, sending frightened guests running for safety.

But engineers say today's hotels are built to withstand a quake of an 8.6 magnitude - one that can cause severe and widespread devastation - because the expansion joints in the elevator shafts, separation slabs and other key structural points are designed to roll with the shock.

In other words, the buildings are supposed to sway.

However, when it comes to other types of disasters, Las Vegas resorts have not always been as prepared. Devastating hotel fires on Nov. 21, 1980, and Feb. 10, 1981, which killed 92 people and injured nearly 1,000, severely tested the international public's confidence in the safety of the gaming and tourism capital.

But from those ashes have come a safer era in Las Vegas with the 1982 retrofitting laws that required all existing and yet-to-be-constructed resorts to install sprinklers on every floor, as well as other safety features.

"At that point all high-rise buildings were required to have fire command rooms along with sprinklers and smoke detectors," Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said. "Today hotels even have communications systems to talk to guests on each floor." During the recent quake those intercoms were not employed by local properties, causing a number of guests to express anger that they were, so to speak, left in the dark to make their own decisions about whether to leave the hotels.

For that decision officials of local major hotels offer no apologies. In fact, they praise their engineers and security officers for not making blanket announcements that could have created a panic.

"The answer as to when the communications system is used is simple - it's when the public's safety is compromised," said Alan Feldman, spokesman for Mirage Resorts, Inc., which owns four hotels including the Mirage on the Strip and the Golden Nugget downtown.

"We inform people when we need to. Otherwise, to make an announcement that there has been an earthquake when there is no structural damage and no need to evacuate will just scare the guests - especially those who slept through it - and cause panic."

Stan Smith, corporate director of risk management for Boyd Gaming Corp., which has 11 resorts including the Stardust on the Strip and Sam's Town on Boulder Highway, said that is the reason his resort made the decision not to alert guests.

"The decision whether to evacuate comes down to what is best for our customers and employeesm," he said. "Making an announcement can cause people to get injured or injure others as they frantically run down stairwells to get out."

Feldman said that having the proper procedures in place is essential, especially when it comes to limiting panic among guests. Having sprinklers in all highrises has also probably saved many lives, he said.

"In the last 10 years I can think of two incidents at our properties that could have turned into similar tragedies if it weren't for all of the changes that were made from those incidents," Feldman said.

He said one was a transformer that shorted out at the Mirage and was put out by sprinklers before firefighters arrived. Another was a fire that started in a housekeeper's cart that also was put out by sprinklers."