Remembering the MGM Grand Fire
November 21 marks the 30th anniversary of the MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas, Nevada, which killed 85 people and injured hundreds more. It was the second largest loss-of-life hotel fire in the United States, surpassed only by the 1946 fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, in which 119 people died.
The Clark County Fire Department invited NFPA to participate in the investigation of the fire in conjunction with FEMA and the National Bureau of Standards, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Among the team NFPA sent was Dave Demers, then a manager of NFPA’s fire investigations department.
"We provided all the fire protection engineering and technical assistance to Clark County for that investigations,” explains Demers who also provides an introduction to the new NFPA video on the fire and its aftermath.
After weeks of investigation, the Clark County Fire Department reported that the probable cause of the fire was heat produced by an electrical ground fault in a serving station in the hotel’s Deli, which was unsprinklered. From The Deli, the fire spread into the casino, which was also unsprinklered, and accelerated quickly to the west end of the building, where it blew out the casino doors and ignited the porte cochère outside.
According to NFPA’s final investigation report , several major factors contributed to the large loss of life in this fire. Among them was the rapid fire and smoke development in the casino in the early stages of the fire due, in part, to the lack of sprinklers and adequate fire barriers. The fire generated massive amounts of smoke that spread up the hotel’s 23-story high-rise tower through unprotected vertical seismic joints and elevator hoistways and the substandard interior stair enclosures and exit passages. In addition, the hotel’s heating, ventilating, and air conditioning continued to operate during the fire, pushing smoke throughout the high-rise.
Investigators found no evidence that the hotel had executed an emergency plan or sounded an evacuation alarm signal. Nor was there any evidence of manual fire alarm pull stations in the natural escape path in the casino. The number and capacity of the exits from the casino were deficient, and the travel distances from certain areas of the casino to the exits were too long. Finally, there was no automatic means of recalling the elevators to the main floor during the fire to prevent people from boarding them. Ten of the MGM Grand victims were found in the hotel’s elevators.
As a result of this fire, Life Safety Code® requirements for stairwell re-entry onto building floors if the exit stair enclosure becomes untenable were changed to include three options. Stairwell doors must now remain unlocked on the inside of the stairwell so that people can get from the stairwell back to guest room floor. Or they may be locked, but they must automatically unlock when the building’s fire alarm system activates. Or hotels may use selected re-entry, in which there may be no more than four intervening floors between unlocked doors and signs must be provided to direct occupants to the floors with unlocked doors.
However, the most important part of revisiting the MGM fire, says Demers, is that it re-emphasizes how important it is to pay attention to, and enforce, fire protection basics. These include installing sprinklers and smoke detectors, enclosing exits and exit discharges, and checking the flame spread potential of interior furnishings.
“You can’t forget the basic stuff,” he says. “It has to be addressed.”
from NFPA website
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