Where was the party?

Monday, Jan. 3, 2000 | 11:23 a.m.

Welcome to the new millennium -- just 362 days away.

Judging from the uneventful welcoming of the year 2000, millennium purists might think that people, at least in Las Vegas, got the message after all -- that the Gregorian calendar begins with the year one, not zero.

So maybe the big party will come the second -- and some would say proper -- time to welcome the millennium: Dec. 31, 2000.

It sure didn't happen Friday night.

As Dec. 31 turned to Jan. 1, local officials said they were more than ready. Despite one Strip death and three auto fatalities, there were no riots, acts of terrorism or Y2K computer problems of any significance. And the Metro Police presence of 800 officers along the Strip was effective.

They saw to every detail -- someone had even suggested greasing the light poles, but they could not come up with a substance to do the job, officials said. Had a proper lubricant been found, tragedy might have been averted.

Tod Matthew Surmon, a 26-year-old amateur wrestler from Menlo Park, Calif., fell to his death after grabbing a wire near a light pole he had climbed outside the Paris Las Vegas hotel-casino moments before the stroke of midnight.

Clark County Coroner Ron Flud said the cause of death was a combination of the electrical shock from the wire and the plummet to the ground.

Surmon wasn't the only reveler to try climbing electrical poles, and police acted in all cases, Metro Police said.

"Pole climbers got arrested," Officer Steve Meriwether, a Metro spokesman, said. "As soon as they came down, they were taken into custody."

At a news conference following Surmon's death, Sheriff Jerry Keller said other than that "unfortunate circumstance" it was an "uneventful New Year's Eve."

Police and other officials said it was pretty average Friday night in Las Vegas and well below average for a local New Year's Eve.

The final count:

At 11 p.m. Friday area hospitals reported 11 women in labor.

By the time the millennium hit Las Vegas, much of the world in earlier time zones had celebrated with little incident, and Las Vegas followed suit.

By contrast, last New Year's Eve thousands of dollars in damage was done to the landscaping and statues at Caesars Palace. This year Caesars and the Venetian hotel-casino erected temporary fences to keep out the rowdies.

There were plenty of cheap booze and big-name entertainers in town, including rocker Rod Stewart at the Rio and divas Barbra Streisand at the MGM and Bette Midler at the Mandalay Bay, to keep the party going.

Between 9 and 9:30 p.m. Metro Police closed off the Strip to auto traffic as the revelers poured into the streets and chanted: "Close the Strip! Close the Strip!" The biggest concentration of street revelers was in front of the Bellagio and Paris hotel-casinos.

A number of revelers expressed disappointment that none of the resorts had fireworks. Hotel, county and police officials had cited potential liability factors as the reason for no colorful pyrotechnic displays.

Exorbitant hotel room rates and Y2K computer fears apparently had a hand in keeping the crowd smaller than expected. Rooms originally priced at $2,000 a night with a minimum stay of three or four nights were slashed in the final weeks of December when they were not rented.

Casino action New Year's Eve was slow at some of the larger casinos. MGM Grand tables, usually packed on weekends, sat half-empty. Table and slot action at New York-New York also was slow. However, the Excalibur $5 and $10 games were packed and the slots also appeared to be busy.

Outside the casinos Friday afternoon, streets slowly filled with revelers and those looking to make a quick buck. However, T-shirt vendors found few takers and scalpers were selling show tickets reportedly for half of face value.

Strip revelers were dressed in everything from tuxedos to jeans and many wore the usual colorful paper hats and "2000" eyeglasses.

Keeping an eye on the revelers was a large but friendly police presence. In one instance, revelers were tossing a huge beach ball that fell into an area cordoned off by police. Officers retrieved the ball several times and tossed it back into the throng, which cheered them.

Many of this year's Strip arrests were the result of fights near O'Shea's casino near Flamingo Road. More than 100 people were taken into custody there.

"We came into this evening committed to zero tolerance for violence," Keller said. When people committed violent acts, "we arrested them and took them to jail."

Those arrested for minor violations were bused to the parking lot of the Family Court on Bonanza and Pecos roads, where they were cited and released to find a way back to the party. Those arrested for felonies were taken to the Clark County Detention Center and booked.

Metro officials said the 911 emergency system was jammed at midnight when a large number of people called to report Surmon's fall, while others dialed to see if the system was still working.

Metro, which had helicopters hovering above and mounted horse patrols at the ready, was assisted by on-loan officers from Henderson and North Las Vegas.

Another 100 Metro officers patrolled downtown, where thousands of people packed the five-block-long Fremont Street Experience to hear classic rock bands perform in a concert under the canopy.

On Saturday Metro kept its command center fully staffed and on Sunday helped support the Highway Patrol in the exit strategy for the traffic leaving Las Vegas.

On Saturday night 800 officers worked the Strip, 100 officers were stationed downtown and 250 patrolled the rest of the county, just as on Friday. However, Meriwether said the department started to cut back on staff by 9:30 p.m.

Although barricades were available for use Saturday night, they were not used and Las Vegas Boulevard was not shut down to auto traffic, Meriwether said. The Strip curfew for juveniles was back to 9 p.m. Saturday.

The Nevada Highway Patrol responded to accidents throughout the valley. Trooper Scott Flabi, the NHP spokesman, said there was one DUI-related crash on Mount Charleston and two of the three fatal accidents in the first hours of the new year were alcohol related. NHP continued to handle traffic calls valleywide on Saturday.

No utilities were affected by computer glitches related to the change from 1999 to 2000. Sprint phones were working, Nevada Power stayed lit, the Las Vegas Valley Water District's water continued to flow and Southwest Gas reported no problems. The Internet stayed up and running.

There were no reports of banks running out of money or ATMs failing. The few banks open on Saturday reported having few customers.

Las Vegas Boulevard was reopened to traffic by 5 a.m., only after street cleaners spent hours removing more than 80 tons of trash from the area, Clark County Public Works spokesman Bobby Shelton said.

"The Nevada Department of Transportation picked up about 40 tons and we picked up about 40 tons -- much less than last year," Shelton said. It was estimated that last New Year's 150 tons of trash was removed from the Strip.

Street cleaners were working at the Fremont Street Experience by 1:30 a.m.

Quiet nights also were reported in Henderson and North Las Vegas.

"The biggest surprise was how quiet things stayed," said Henderson city spokeswoman Vicki Taylor. "We kept expecting things to get busy as the evening went on but it never picked up. A lot of people must have decided to stay home and watch TV."

North Las Vegas Police Lt. Chris Larotonda said, "We were kind of busy, but we had a lot of manpower so there was no problem. Because of that, we may have had a little more timely response to incidents than on a normal Friday night."

North Las Vegas Police responded to 98 incidents in which reports were taken or arrests were made, Larotonda said.

There were no reported incidents in Primm and Laughlin, Keller said.

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