Las Vegas braces for explosive holiday

Jen Lawson

Friday, Dec. 20, 2002 | 10:28 a.m.

Las Vegas Boulevard will be closed for several hours on New Year's Eve. Following is a list of Strip hotels and how to get to them:

Resort hotels on the Las Vegas Strip are famous for being ablaze with flashy lights every night of the year, but when the new year is rung in they'll be upstaged by explosions of color in the skies.

An eight-minute, $500,000 fireworks show is expected to be the booming climax of what is being billed this year as "America's Party."

Television broadcasts of the celebration will be seen by millions of people and about 280,000 tourists are expected to be partying in Las Vegas that night, so Metro Police plan to have more than 1,200 officers patrolling the Strip and the Fremont Street Experience, Sgt. Rick Barela said.

"We're committed to making this a safe experience for everyone," he said.

Officers warn that laws will be enforced -- so unruly drunks, aspiring pole climbers and flashers beware.

As the well-supervised crowd is counting down the last seconds to midnight, golden comets will be launched from the rooftops of hotels, and high-frequency strobes will bounce light across the sky, the producers of the show said Thursday.

At midnight, 65,000 pyrotechnic effects will erupt from 10 hotels along the five miles from the Excalibur to the Stratosphere.

"We plan to use a lot of movement, style and excitement, creating a real sense of Las Vegas entertainment in fireworks," said Jim Souza of Pyro Spectaculars by Souza, a Southern California-based fireworks production company whose credits include the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

A couple of miles from the Stratosphere, under the lights of the Fremont Street Experience, an event called "The World's Biggest New Year's Eve Dance Party" will feature the swing band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Mayor Oscar Goodman said he'll be partying there.

Last year the big party from the Strip to downtown drew 300,000 to 350,000 people.

With crowds come problems, however.

Seconds before midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, Las Vegas' party was marred by the death of a 26-year-old California man who had climbed a light pole along the Strip and fell. He grabbed an electrical line before he hit ground.

Several months ago Metro began planning how to keep the peace on this New Year's Eve.

The crowd control plan features the use of metal barricades that will be placed along Las Vegas Boulevard curbs on the afternoon of Dec. 31. The barricades, first used in 1998, allow police to gradually close the Strip to traffic by moving barricades toward the center of the street from both sidewalks as the crowd grows.

The barricades, which are waist-high and about 10 feet long with vertical metal bars, will eventually be pushed toward the center of Las Vegas Boulevard, where police will maintain a lane for emergency vehicles and as a regrouping area for officers.

Paramedics will be stationed at various points along Las Vegas Boulevard, and so will corrections officers with buses ready to take people arrested to the Clark County jail.

Last year Metro made 183 arrests, including 46 juveniles, and arrested an additional 14 people at the Fremont Street Experience.

The Clark County and Las Vegas fire departments will be monitoring wind conditions, although U.S. Weather Service records show no history of winds at that time of year that would have been strong enough to cancel this type of fireworks show, CCFD spokeswoman Sandra Baker said.

Motorists can park in garages and at meters downtown free of charge on both days.

To help reduce traffic, rides on Citizens Area Transit buses will be free from 6 p.m. Dec. 31 to 6 p.m. Jan 1. Buses will be on a regular schedule Dec. 31 and on a reduced schedule Jan. 1.