MGM Grand Fire Victims Didn’t Die Playing Slots
When you play online baccarat, the last thing you are likely to be worried about is the building you’re in burning down, but if it does, there is no doubt that you would put your safety first and abandon the game. While this may sound obvious to all, there is a persistent, disturbing, and offensive myth surrounding the 1980 MGM Grand Hotel tragic fire in Las Vegas.
There have been numerous cruel and false narratives surrounding the devastating tragedy, which took 87 lives on November 21, 1980, including the claim that some victims perished because they refused to stop gambling.
This rumor suggests that individuals chose to remain at their slot machines rather than leave the casino, which ultimately led to their deaths. At one point, a now-deleted quiz on vegasslotsonline.com even claimed:
“Gamblers in the casino who had refused to immediately leave their slot machines were killed when a fireball shot through the casino, scorching everything from the ceiling to the floor and out the doors to valet parking.”
A Reddit user responding to the quiz link commented, “Can’t believe that some people died in the MGM fire because they refused to leave the slot machines! Greed kills.”
While the story is completely false, the Reddit poster was ultimately correct that greed played a central role in the tragic event.
Greed Was the Real Killer
The real reason why the fire was so deadly was a series of decisions driven by cost-cutting and disregard for safety. When MGM Grand was being built in the early 1970s, its owners, billionaire Kirk Kerkorian and company chairman Fred Benninger, fought against installing automatic sprinklers in large sections of the resort.
Despite clear warnings from the Clark County Fire Marshal and a letter from their own consultants at Orvin Engineering Company cautioning that areas without sprinklers posed significant liability, the MGM executives wanted to avoid spending the money. The full cost of installing sprinklers would have been $192,000, just a small fraction of the hotel’s $106 million construction budget.
They appealed to the Clark County Building Department, where director John Pisciotta approved their request for exemption. He justified his decision by claiming that since the resort would operate 24 hours a day, the presence of staff would allow for fast detection and response, which supposedly made sprinklers unnecessary.
Tragically, his decision had fatal consequences. In the words of National Fire Protection Association investigator David Demers, who analyzed the incident in a 1982 report:
“With sprinklers, it would have been a one- or two-sprinkler fire, and we never would have heard about it.”
Where the Myth Came From
The story about gamblers dying at their slot machines appears to have begun with a Washington Post article published two days after the fire. Journalist Kathy Sawyer wrote that two victims were found “frozen in their tracks by slot machines.”
However, her statement was simply not true. The Clark County Fire Department’s official investigation found no victims in the casino area itself. Of the 17 bodies discovered on the first floor, not a single one was located near any gaming equipment.
Furthermore, according to Clark County Fire Captain Jon Sabol, who was an active firefighter at the scene, everyone in the casino managed to move away from the slot machines and tables before the deadly fireball tore through the space.
Speaking to the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2015, Sabol said:
“Nobody died at a gaming table or slot machine. They were slow in getting out. But everyone got away from the tables and slot machines before the fireball came through.”
The Aftermath of the Fire
Eight months after the tragic fire MGM Grand reopened with major safety upgrades, including a complete sprinkler system and fire alarm network.
A $50 million renovation came soon after, including the addition of a 26-story tower later that same year. However, the hotel’s reputation never fully recovered, and over 1,350 lawsuits were filed related to the tragedy. Ultimately, MGM paid $223 million in settlements. In fact, Las Vegas was so overwhelmed by litigation that the city struggled to find enough law firms to manage all the cases.
Eventually, MGM sold both the MGM Grand and the MGM Grand Reno to Bally Manufacturing in April 1986. That property, after various ownership and changes in branding, became Horseshoe Las Vegas in 2022 under Caesars Entertainment.
In the meantime, MGM’s owner, Kerkorian, purchased land farther south on the Strip to build a new MGM Grand, which opened in 1993 and remains in operation today.
