Cigarette sparks fire at Aladdin

Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2003 | 9:33 a.m.

A pre-dawn smoky fire today at the Aladdin, sparked by a lit cigarette in the laundry chute, caused the evacuation of three floors and resulted in six people being treated at the scene for smoke inhalation.

Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said incidents of cigarettes smouldering in linens are more typically accidental than deliberate, but the fire remains under investigation.

The fire, which caused more water damage than flame or smoke damage, was noticed about 4:30 a.m. when smoke alarms and the indoor sprinkler systems in the hotel went off on the 21st floor, Leinbach said.

"We evacuated the 21st floor and the floors above and below it, but more people on other floors who smelled smoke and others in the casino evacuated themselves," Leinbach said, noting a number of total evacuees was not known.

The sprinkler system extinguished the fire on the 21st floor and firefighters in the basement put out the fire that was in the linens there, he said.

A dollar damage was not immediately available.

"Cigarettes, unlike pipes and cigars, don't put themselves out," Leinbach said. "They occasionally get trapped in sheets, smoulder and, under the right conditions, continue to burn."

Early indications are that the alarms, sprinkler systems, command center and other phases of the intricate fire protection system worked, Leinbach said.

The ventilation system, which is designed to remove smoke from rooms and halls, will be checked to determine if it functioned properly, Leinbach said.

All hotel guests were able to return to their rooms by 6:30 a.m., he said.

Leinbach said none of the guests who inhaled smoke needed to be transported to area hospitals and that none of the 30 responding firefighters were injured.

He said there has not been a high-rise fire death in Las Vegas in 22 years. The last was when eight people perished on Feb. 10, 1981, in the Las Vegas Hilton fire, which came three months after the Nov. 21, 1980, fire at the MGM -- now Bally's -- that took 87 lives.

Philip Cline, then a 23-year-old Hilton busboy, was convicted in the Hilton arson and currently is serving eight life terms without parole plus 15 years for arson.

Before the Hilton and MGM fires, Clark County had recorded only two hotel deaths from fire. One was the manager of the Holiday Inn on the Strip, who fell asleep smoking a cigarette in bed. The other was county fire Capt. Frank Testa, who suffered a heart attack while fighting a fire at the Stardust hotel in 1969.