Word: blazing
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Tired and dazed, the guests waited to be escorted to their smoke-blackened rooms to retrieve belongings. Passing motorists slowed on Flamingo Road to gawk and snap pictures. Inside, firemen sloshed through the gutted casino, trying to puzzle out how the blaze began...
...deaths might climb higher still. Said Las Vegas Fire Chief Ray Parrish: "People tend to hide when they get afraid, so it may be a day and a half more before we can arrive at a final figure." The MGM Grand Hotel fire is the second worst such blaze in U.S. history, surpassed only by the Winecoff Hotel disaster in Atlanta in 1946, which killed...
Though the exact cause of the blaze remained to be determined, investigators decided that it started in the kitchen of the ground-floor delicatessen. James Kalb was across the street when the conflagration broke out. "I heard this great big explosion toward the front end of the casino," he said. "Then I saw this big mass of flame, about 100 feet in diameter." Pandemonium surged through the casino, which stayed open 24 hours a day, as the flames roared up through the catwalk called the "eye in the sky," used by the management to monitor gambling. The early-morning patrons...
Though the blaze never spread above the second floor, it apparently knocked out the telephone switchboard and the fire alarm system. The 4,500 guests in their rooms thus received no warning. Those still sleeping were awakened, one by one, by screams and choking smoke. Says Keith Beverton of Woodland Hills, Calif.: "I opened my hotel room door and people were shouting, 'What should we do?' It was death, absolute death there. I closed the door but the air in my room was so thick I was having trouble breathing...
...Veen, technical director for Holland America Lines: "Even if the Prinsendam had a sprinkler system, I doubt whether this could have prevented the fire from spreading." Holland America officials contended that as the fire raged out of control, the Prinsendam performed superbly. The doors and bulkheads contained the blaze long enough to allow passengers to abandon ship. But the most disturbing question remains. If a fire can rage out of control on a ship supposedly as safe as the Prinsendam, is any cruise ship safe...