Monday, Nov. 8, 1999 | 11:53 a.m.
Las Vegas has experienced its share of acts of God and man-caused disasters -- fire, floods, earthquakes, etc. -- and the operators of skyscraping hotel-casinos have weathered such incidents and learned from their mistakes.
Last month an earthquake in the Southern California desert with a magnitude greater than 7.0 caused the mighty Strip towers to sway, sending frightened guests running for safety.
But engineers say today's hotels are built to withstand a quake of an 8.6 magnitude -- one that can cause severe and widespread devastation -- because the expansion joints in the elevator shafts, separation slabs and other key structural points are designed to roll with the shock. In other words, the buildings are supposed to sway.
However, when it comes to other types of disasters, Las Vegas resorts have not always been as prepared. Devastating hotel fires on Nov. 21, 1980, and Feb. 10, 1981, which killed 92 people and injured nearly 1,000, severely tested the international public's confidence in the safety of the gaming and tourism capital.
But from those ashes have come a safer era in Las Vegas with the 1982 retrofitting laws that required all existing and yet-to-be-constructed resorts to install sprinklers on every floor, as well as other safety features.
"At that point all high-rise buildings were required to have fire command rooms along with sprinklers and smoke detectors," Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said. "Today hotels even have communications systems to talk to guests on each floor."
During the recent quake those intercoms were not employed by local properties, causing a number of guests to express anger that they were, so to speak, left in the dark to make their own decisions about whether to leave the hotels.
For that decision officials of local major hotels offer no apologies. In fact, they praise their engineers and security officers for not making blanket announcements that could have created a panic.
"The answer as to when the communications system is used is simple -- it's when the public's safety is compromised," said Alan Feldman, spokesman for Mirage Resorts, Inc., which owns four hotels including the Mirage on the Strip and the Golden Nugget downtown.
"We inform people when we need to. Otherwise, to make an announcement that there has been an earthquake when there is no structural damage and no need to evacuate will just scare the guests -- especially those who slept through it -- and cause panic."
Stan Smith, corporate director of risk management for Boyd Gaming Corp., which has 11 resorts including the Stardust on the Strip and Sam's Town on Boulder Highway, said that is the reason his resort made the decision not to alert guests.
"In such emergencies, we would, if possible, send security officers to each floor to get people out calmly and safely," he said. "And security also would have taken care of things that people may forget to do during such incidents, like lock the room doors after they leave so that property that guests leave behind is not stolen.
"The decision whether to evacuate comes down to what is best for our customers and employees. Making an announcement can cause people to get injured or injure others as they frantically run down stairwells to get out."
Leinbach said state-of-the-art communications systems are better used by fire department rescuers during an emergency so they can locate victims and advise them what to do until they can be safely evacuated.
And, Feldman warns, that alarms go off "all the time" for many reasons. Many times they do not require a full response by the fire department.
"We had a situation where a signal (on the electronic command room board) told us a room sprinkler had gone off," he said. "We checked it out and found it was not set off by a fire, but rather by a wedding gown that a guest had hung from the sprinkler."
Local hotels have developed their safety manuals from years of tested procedures. While those procedures generally are uniform, they are tailored to fit the layouts of individual hotels. For instance, resorts that have swimming pools on their roofs can use that water as a secondary source in fighting a high-rise fire, officials said.
When an incident occurs, the manual's procedures should be followed like clockwork, said a longtime local hotel engineer.
"The first thing we do is an integrity check both at the command center and on site," said the engineer who asked that his name not be used. "We check if elevators shut down, if gas lines have ruptured or if sprinkler lines break. Cracks in the swimming pool can tell us an awful lot about structural damage."
At the same time, he said, other safety officials call the fire and police departments to determine the epicenter and strength of the quake and to share information about what has happened both at the resort and to surrounding areas.
"All of this is done in 1 1/2 to two minutes to determine how we are going to take care of our guests and our employees," he said. "If there is no structural damage, as was the case in the last earthquake, then there is no reason to call or evacuate."
He noted that after any incident, there is going to be a small percentage of people who panic and call the front desk to find out what happened. But to make a broad announcement that an earthquake has occurred would most likely cause many more guests and even hotel workers on upper floors to call the switchboard, he said.
"If you do that, 3,000 people may call at the same time, causing a communications breakdown," he said. "If guests can't get through because the phone lines are tied up, they may panic and then you have bigger problems."
Many experts agree that the 1980 fire at the old MGM, now Bally's, that killed 84 and injured about 750, and the 1981 fire at the Las Vegas Hilton that killed eight and injured about 250 encouraged technological advancements that have greatly benefited Las Vegas and other tourism communities.
"In the last 10 years I can think of two incidents at our properties that could have turned into similar tragedies if it weren't for all of the changes that were made from those incidents," Feldman said.
"One was a transformer that shorted out at the Mirage and was put out by sprinklers before firefighters arrived. Another was a fire that started in a housekeeper's cart that also was put out by sprinklers."
Smith noted that resorts that do not prepare for catastrophes face other forms of financial distress.
"OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has some pretty stiff penalties for not being ready -- up to $70,000 per violation," he said.
But all of the responsibility for safety should not fall on the hotels. Guests also play a key role and should practice common sense safety procedures, he said.
"I travel a lot, so when I check into a hotel room I look for the nearest fire exit -- in fact I look for at least two exits on my floor," Smith said. "I check the windows to see if they are locked. I check to see if the phone works because not all hotels automatically activate the phones in the rooms.
"If a fire were to break out, I would soak the towels and, if necessary, the drapes and put them against the doors to keep the smoke out. Before opening a door, I'd check to see if it is hot. I also would follow the hotel's safety plan instructions (many resorts post them on or near room doors). But the best advice is don't panic."
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