The Monte Carlo Hotel/Casino Vegas is on fire!!!!!!!

[skip68]

Just got a call from Hubby, and turned on the news to see the hotel on fire!!! Actually, I can see the black smoke from my upstairs windows!!!! Hope no one was planning on staying there for Mopars in March! 
Mrs.Skip68

[Ponch ®]

i just read that "people are still gambling" 

[41husk]

They sure are gambling, if they don't evacuate

[moparstuart]

i just read that "people are still gambling" 

maybe hoping for a panic so they can grab some cash

[Blown70]

AHHH heck its the top floors NO need to worry for a while  Have another drink and Keep playing

[skip68]

Our local news says that they are indeed evacuating the hotel above the 15th floor. And they have barricades blocking off the surrounding streets.
Weird thing that I just saw, was they panned down to the bottom, and there were a couple charred windows there too! That center core is the elevator shafts, and that's two windows away from those charred windows. Good thing is, so far, no reports of injury!!

Mrs.Skip68

[69bronzeT5]

I'd evacuate the whole hotel. That fire is big enough where it looks like its moving through the hotel fast.

[skip68]

I saw on the local news a bride in her wedding dress being evacuated!!!! That's sad! I know how much money and time goes into planning a wedding, and then a fire happens.  That sucks!
Mrs.Skip68

[Brock Samson]

i sure hope that couple's antics in the honeymoon suite didn't start the fire in the first place...     

[69bronzeT5]

Any idea on how it started?

[69bronzeT5]

LAS VEGAS (AP)--A fire broke out Friday on the roof of the Monte Carlo hotel- casino on the Las Vegas Strip and quickly spread, forcing guests and employees to flee before firefighters got the upper hand, officials said.

Firefighters contained the fire within about an hour, he said, and no one was injured. Smith said he could not estimate damage to the 32-story hotel.

"As we go out of the danger zone, we'll methodically check each floor," Clark County Fire Chief Steve Smith said. "No rooms are burning."

The three-alarm fire, which began just before 11 a.m., spread from the center section of the hotel across the roof line. Orange flames licked at the hotel's sign and plumes of thick black smoke poured from the rooftop of the resort. Flaming embers fell to the street below.

Clark County spokesman Eric Pappa said county officials were told welders were working on the roof of the building before the fire, but reports of workers trapped on the roof were incorrect.

The fire chief said once the fire was extinguished, investigators would begin trying to determine how the fire started. There was no immediate indication of criminal activity or arson, he said.

Smith called it an external fire, but said heat and smoke set off alarms and sprinklers inside the building. No rooms burned, he said.

The facade was made of a foam building material that "melted off the side of the building and started a few fires below," Smith said.

Smith said the fire was being fought inside the building by about 100 firefighters, not with ladder trucks.

Floors 25 to 32 were immediately evacuated, and lower parts of the hotel were still being cleared about 90 minutes later.

Guests were being taken to the MGM Grand Garden Arena, and employees were evacuated to the adjacent New York-New York hotel, said Gordon Absher, spokesman for the hotel owner, MGM Mirage Inc (MGM). Hotel officials said guests would be moved to other MGM Mirage hotels. They estimated the hotel was almost full and about 900 workers were on duty when the fire began.

As the fire burned, huge crowds formed on the Las Vegas Strip, and traffic was gridlocked as streets were blocked off around the hotel. Helicopters circled overhead.

The nearby resorts, Bellagio and New York New York were not evacuated.

The Monte Carlo Resort & Casino, with 3,002 guest rooms and 211 suites in its upper floors, is on Las Vegas Boulevard, near Tropicana Avenue. It opened in June 1996.

The hotel, modeled after the Place du Casino in Monte Carlo, Monaco, was a joint venture between Steve Wynn's Mirage Resorts and Circus Circus Enterprises.

It is now planned to be linked by a monorail that will connect it to the CityCenter casino complex and Bellagio to the north.

The Monte Carlo is down the street from the scene of Nevada's deadliest fire, a Nov. 21, 1980, blaze that killed 87 people at the old MGM Grand hotel and led to strict fire codes in Las Vegas resorts.

That hotel was rebuilt and sold in 1985 and renamed Bally's. It is now owned by Harrah's Entertainment Inc (HET). The cause of the deadly fire was traced to an electrical malfunction in a refrigerated pastry case in the hotel deli.