Friday, May 16, 2003 | 11:32 a.m.
As a rookie firefighter in 1962, Anthony Capucci remembers hauling hoses into the burning Golden Hotel in Reno and finding an odd scene.
"You could see flames at the other end of the casino," he said, "and there were people still playing craps."
Now a Nevada state fire marshal, Capucci is investigating an April 29 fire that destroyed the Mountain View Casino & Bowl in Pahrump. No one was hurt, but the fire drew a special response from firefighters, law enforcement agencies and gambling regulators.
Casino fires are different.
"There's money involved," said Keith Copher, enforcement chief of the state Gaming Control Board in Las Vegas, "and hopefully, not too much of it burned up."
Even before firefighters had finished hosing down the embers at the Mountain View, Copher's aides and agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were on the scene.
"We're basically ensuring the security of the assets," Copher said, "to ensure nothing is stolen, and then conduct a count and inventory and an audit to make sure everything is accounted for."
Only the main cashier window was open when smoke began rolling through the casino before 4 a.m., Capucci said. Fewer than 25 employees and patrons were inside, including the two cashiers who slammed strongboxes shut, locked them and fled outside.
Capucci and Pahrump Fire Chief Scott Lewis said their investigation determined the Mountain View fire was an accident -- the result of an oil-filled deep fryer overheating when a cook fired it up for the breakfast rush.
Capucci estimated damage to the building at $13 million, and $2 million to its contents. Officials aren't saying say how much money was in the casino.
Copher said state law requires casinos have enough cash on hand to pay off if all jackpots were to hit. He said the amount a casino is required to keep at any time is not made public for security reasons.
He recalled a pre-dawn fire in June 1998 that forced 300 guests from the Gold Strike Inn near Hoover Dam. One-dollar-coin tokens from the burned casino kept showing up for months at other casinos around southern Nevada, where they were redeemed as usual.
Chips shouldn't be in circulation after a fire, Copher said.
"In that case," he said of the Gold Strike fire, "we believe some tokens were stolen. We don't have any evidence of that here."
At the Mountain View in Pahrump about 60 miles from Las Vegas, "everything was accounted for and no inappropriate activity occurred," Copher said. "There's nothing to show that anything got away."
Authorities have learned from past casino fires how stubborn gamblers can be.
In 1986 -- five years after a blaze killed eight people at the Las Vegas Hilton and 87 at the MGM Grand -- slot players stayed put at the Dunes while 1,600 guests filed out. Fire officials found five fires had been set in a lounge and linen closets at the now-demolished Dunes. Five people were treated for smoke inhalation.
The MGM Grand blaze, on Nov. 21, 1980, was the second-worst hotel fire in U.S. history. The hotel had no fire sprinklers then. Officials said sprinklers might have stopped the fire from spreading from a downstairs delicatessen into the casino, consuming plastics and sending thick, poisonous smoke into air ducts and the upper floors.
In the chaos on the casino floor, some gamblers grabbed money and chips and ran, Copher said. Not many chips were redeemed afterward, and no one was ever prosecuted, although the gambling enforcement chief said authorities might have considered theft charges.
"If the chips are scorched, there's a good chance they got them after the fire," Copher said. "Then, it's just a question of how they got them."
To be sure the Mountain View site was secure, Lewis noticed the area had been fenced and posted with a 24-hour guard when firefighters left the night of the fire.
"There's a lot of money and chips in a casino," said Nye County Sheriff Anthony DeMeo, who watched a couple of days afterward as tractors lifted three safes from the rubble.
Capucci said he approached his investigation of the Mountain View casino fire as if it were a bank.
"But in a bank, you've got big fireproof vaults," the fire marshal said.
"Here, you've got (cashier) cages with small safes and each slot machine with money in it."
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