Word: stair
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...smoke, not the fire, did the damage, billowing in thick black clouds up the air ducts and stair wells, trapping guests on the upper floors of the 26-story structure. At week's end, the death toll had reached 83, and at least 334 were injured; officials feared that the number of 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...
Panicked guests searched frantically for exits. Some managed to make their way to the stair wells, only to discover thick smoke or, worse, that once they had started down they found the doors locked on the stair well side as a security precaution. Others were caught in the hallways. Said Fire Department Captain Ralph Dinsman: "If they'd stayed in their rooms until we got to them, a lot of the dead would have survived...
Firemen clambered up rescue ladders and began helping guests from windows and balconies. Since the ladders reached only as high as the ninth floor, dozens of other firemen headed up the stair wells to fetch guests from higher floors and lead them down to safety. But the most dramatic rescues were made by eleven helicopters, nine from nearby Nellis Air Force Base, that hovered over the roof, let down cables and lifted up hundreds of guests...
...struggling under the side of the desk in the center of the stair, uttering his own brand of condescension: "apebreath, banana boy, wop, grease ball, pizzabrain, vegetable-peddler;" he was pulling all the plugs on a last ditch performance to maintain grace. And I was unable to respond, my own vicious and maligned thoughts were tripping over each other, filling my mouth with cotton candy, my head with the stuff of insanity...
Senior Reporter-Researcher Sara Medina lives in a renovated brownstone apartment that she describes as "almost a dream house: it has a skylight, a graceful stair well and lots of light and space." Its only disadvantage is that it was not designed by her favorite architect-her husband. Working on the cover story, Medina gained a new appreciation of "the 'white world' of architects and their square boxes." We know you will understand and appreciate them better, too, after reading Bob Hughes' informed and graceful judgments on the artists who work with stone, steel and wood...