Word: built
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...been cut in the fire walls near the catwalk, possibly helping the fire spread-the MGM Grand apparently met all other fire regulations. The county building code passed in 1979 required new hotels in Las Vegas to install sprinklers and smoke detectors on every floor, but the MGM Grand, built in 1973, was exempt. The hotel had sprinklers only on the basement, first and top floors. There were no smoke detectors. Said MGM Grand Hotels Board Chairman Fred Benninger of the tragedy: "This could have happened in any large hotel anywhere in America...
...vary greatly from place to place. In New York City, for example, hotels are required to have a system of water pumps and hoses, sprinklers on floors below ground level, an alarm system and a watchman on duty 24 hours a day. Even though many New York hotels were built before World War II and thus have thick walls, windows that open and other safety features, Assistant Fire Chief John Fogarty is worried. "We have at least one hotel fire a day," he says. "We're not free from the possibility of a major catastrophe...
...five casino hotels in Atlantic City, on the other hand, four were built after the city adopted a tough fire-safety code in 1978. As a result, they have sprinklers and smoke alarms on all floors, elevators that return automatically to the ground floor in case of fire, and outside stairways to allow quick evacuations. Yet no matter how new they are, high-rise hotels-indeed, all high-rise buildings-remain largely out of the life-saving reach of firetruck aerial ladders. Most of them can extend only 90 ft. or so, or as high as the eighth or ninth...
...nation's most stringent fire codes. Every building over 70 ft. tall, for instance, must have a sprinkler in every room, closet and corridor. Just as important, owners of some existing buildings have voluntarily modernized their fire-safety systems. The venerable seven-story Copley Plaza was built in 1912, but its owners are spending $460,000 to install smoke alarms in every room after an arsonist's blaze in 1979 killed two people...
...refitting an old building can be twice as expensive as installing the same system in a new one, and owners are usually reluctant to do so voluntarily. Las Vegas fire department officials, for example, claim they have urged the MGM Grand Hotel and other hotels built be fore the 1979 building code to install sprinkler systems and smoke alarms, but to no avail. "Retrofitting of the older hotels has always been an economic tug of war," says Clark County Manager Bruce Spaulding. Perhaps now they will. Says Gordon Vickery, director of the U.S. Fire Administration: "We usually lose people...