MGM Grand Fire Term Paper

Total Length: 918 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

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fire at MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The writer discusses the cause of the fire as well as many aspects of the response from emergency management. There were five sources used to complete this paper.

One of the biggest fears that travelers have when they check into a hotel is fire. The thought of a fire breaking out in a high rise hotel and killing people before they can be rescued goes through the mind of millions of tourists each year. Often they calm themselves with the reminder that it is a one in a million chance. That may have been what the patrons of the MGM Grand Hotel believed on the night before November 21, 1980(Koch, 2000). By the 22nd they knew the odds had caught up and a fire broke out.

The hotel fire made international news and provided the basis for fire studies throughout the country. Following the fire at MGM many hotels changed their protocol and many fire departments worked to improve their response time. Everybody did not agree with the changes however. The decision makers at MGM argued that placing a two dollar smoke detector in each room even after the fire occurred was to much of an expense.

The MGM Fire has been recorded as the second worst hotel fire in the history of the nation. When all was aid and done almost 100 people were dead and many others injured.
The MGM fire has been credited with opening the public's eyes to the fact that fire and smoke do kill people. When the fire occurred the Nevada Governor appointed a committee of fire prevention experts that included building inspectors, government officials and firefighters to examine the fire's causes and things that could have been done to minimize the damage and death that it caused (Koch, 2000).

One of the biggest issues that came to the public following the MGM Grand fire was the fact that it did not have a sprinkler system installed.

Five months after the MGM fire, the Nevada Legislature passed a bill mandating sprinkler systems in all hotels, motels, office buildings, and apartments higher than 55 feet and requiring sprinklers in showrooms and other public gathering places of more than 15,000 square feet (Koch, 2000)."

One possible reason for the laid back attitude about hotel fires, from the prevention measures to the alleged slower than possible response time to the fire was the fact that until the MGM burned there had only been two recorded deadly fires in recent history in that county.

Following the MGM fire there were many changes made both in preventative measures and legislature to insure a similar tragedy does not happen in the future.

Today you'd have a better chance drowning from….....

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