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84 Confirmed Fire Victims Are Identified at Las Vegas MGM Grand Hotel
Las Vegas, Nev - An electrical failure in a wall in the MGM Grand Hotel Casino sparked the fire that flashed through the gaming area and killed more than 80 guests and employees, Fire Chief, Roy Parrish said Saturday night.
Clark County Fire Investigator, Mike Patterson said the fire may have smoldered in the wall for eight hours before it burst out in a fireball that ravaged the gambling area, in less than two minutes.
“It just exploded” Chief Parrish said at a news conference. “It burned through the wall and burst into the casino with such force that it knocked down one of the employees. He said a short-circuit was found in the attic above a delicatessen restaurant off the casino. The flames burned through the attic until they met fresh oxygen supplies, sparking the inferno, authorities said.
The chief said the sprinkler systems in the showroom, halls of the basement and 26th floor functioned properly, but there were no sprinklers elsewhere because they were not required when the hotel was built in 1973.
Experts sought to determine whether the plush $106 million hotel, one of the world’s largest, had adequate safeguards to warn guests of danger. Some guests said they first learned of the fire on radio or television in their rooms.
Searchers combed through each of the hotel’s 2300 rooms looking for more victims of the fire that sent poisonous fumes and suffocating smoke up through the 26-story tower where most of the estimated 5000 guests were still asleep.
At least one Tennesseean has been identified as being a death victim of the hotel fire. Officials said the body of Mrs. Genell McDowell, 48, a registered nurse and wife of Memphis lawyer, A.V. McDowell, was found in the casino.
Knoxville News-Sentinel (Knoxville, TN) – Sunday November 23 & November 25, 1980
Services for Genell Barnett McDowell, 48, Memphis, Tenn. who died November 21, 1980 in the Las Vegas MGM Hotel fire, were held in Memphis November 25.
She is survived by a sister, Virginia Barnett, Olney; a son, Stuart and daughter Genell Marie, both of Memphis; her mother Erma Bauman, Olney; and her father, Cliff Barnett.
She was born in St. Louis, Missouri September 21, 1932 to Cliff and Erma (Bauman)Barnett. She married A.V. McDowell, who survives.
Mrs. McDowell lived in Olney during the 1950's and attended Olney Township High School.
Published in Olney Daily Mail (IL)
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