Strict Fire Codes Saved Lives at Cosmo This Weekend: A Look Back at the Worst US Hotel Fires
A Saturday afternoon fire on the rooftop of the Cosmopolitan Hotel on the famed Las Vegas Strip could have been far more destructive to both lives and property.
A fast reaction by the Las Vegas Fire Department to contain the blaze and strict fire codes helped reduce the damage with only one non-life threatening injury reported.
"Clark County's building and fire codes are among the most stringent in the nation," the county wrote in a prepared statement Monday.
Las Vegas learned from a 1980 hotel fired at the MGM grand that claimed the lives of 87 people, nearly all from smoke inhalation. That tragedy remains the worst in Nevada state history and the third worst fire in modern U.S. history.
At the time of the fire, approximately 5,000 people were in the hotel and casino, a 23-story luxury resort with more than 2,000 hotel rooms. The fire started in a hotel deli on a lower floor with smoke escaping traveling through elevator shafts, stair cases and seismic joints. Most of the deaths occurred on the top floor as a result.
In 1986, a New Year’s Eve daytime fire at San Juan’s Dupont Hotel killed 98 people while injuring 140. That blaze was begun by disgruntled striking hotel workers, who had set small fires throughout the building as scare tactics, only to have one of the fires ignite fire and quickly spread throughout the property. 84 bodies were found in the casino, a result of smoke being sucked in from smoke-eaters (devices in the ceiling that sucked the smoke from cigarettes out of the room). Patrons then discovered that emergency exit doors were locked and that the only other egress from the casino was through a pair of inward-opening doors. That fire would ultimately be ruled an arson. Three men were convicted and sentenced to 99 years in prison. Of the three employees accused of the fire, only one, Héctor Escudero Aponte, is still in prison. Armando Jimenez and José Francisco Rivera Lopez were released from federal prison in 2001 and 2002, respectively
The worst hotel fire in U.S. history occurred at the Winecoff in Atlanta in 1946. 119 people were killed as a result. The Winecoff at previously been advertised as “absolutely fireproof”.
While the hotel's steel structure was indeed protected against the effects of fire, the hotel's interior finishes were combustible, and the building's exit arrangements consisted of a single stairway serving all fifteen floors
All of the hotel's occupants above the fire's origin on the third floor were trapped, and the fire's survivors either were rescued from upper-story windows or jumped into nets held by firemen. It was believed to have been ignited by a discarded cigarette.
- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com
