Construction on the 26-story, 2 million square foot MGM Grand Casino and Hotel project began in 1972, and it was open for business in December of 1973.  During construction, the local fire marshall insisted that the building be sprinkled, but the hotel owners refused to pay the additional $192,000 that it would cost to install it.

The local building official overruled the fire marshall, and decided that they were not going to force the installation of the sprinkler system.  However, the owners did install some limited sprinkler systems that covered part of the 26th floor, a showroom, the restaurant, an arcade, and the convention areas.

The MGM had few fire safety features at all.  When building officials toured the building prior to issuing an occupancy permit, they found that fire doors had not been installed, and forced the owners to install them before allowing the hotel to open.

The building had a fire alarm system, but it could only be activated by security personnel from their office on the casino floor level.  The alarm system was designed so that audible alarms would not sound until five minutes after it was activated.

The hotel had six stairwells, and three of them were "smokeproof".  These were intended for emergency exits only, since the only doors that could be opened from inside the stairwell were at the top and bottom floors.  All of the others would lock upon closing.

On November 21st, 1980, there were 2,076 guest rooms in the hotel and 780 more were under construction at another wing of the building.

And what none of those 50 guests having their morning coffee in the Orleans Coffee Shop knew at the time was that, several hours earlier, an electrical wire inside the wall behind the pastry case had developed a short and a fire was burning inside the wall.

At 7:09 am, workers from a tile-setting crew entered the building, and noticed a crackling sound.  Looking around for the source of the sound, they found a wall that was fully enveloped in flames.  One of them went for a fire hose, but the pressure of heat and smoke prevented him from getting close enough to extinguish the fire.

At 7:17 am, the fire department was called, and the first fire crew arrived in only two minutes.

Upon entering the casino, firemen saw thick black smoke coming from the Deli shop.  Suddenly a fireball erupted from the Deli.  Fireman quickly retreated to the north entrance as smoke rushed toward them. Within 25 seconds, the fireball traveled from the Deli and burst out of the entrance, which was over three hundred feet away.   Three people died attempting to escape the fireball.

The ensuing fire raced through the lower portions of the building, filling the rooms and corridors of the floors above with smoke. There were about five thousand people in the hotel at the time, most of them still in their rooms.
As guests became aware of the fire, they reacted differently.  Some of them assumed that it was nothing to be concerned about, and stayed in their rooms.

Others began to make their way through the smoke to the stairways in an effort to escape.  Upon entering the stairwell, they found that it was full of smoke as well.  They tried to go back into the corridor, but the door had locked behind them.

As the fire continued to rage, the air-conditioning system continued to run, pumping the thick, acrid smoke throughout the building, making it even more difficult to escape.

By 11:45 am, the fire had been extinguished.  By that time, 85 people were dead, and over 600 had been injured.

It was later determined that several factors contributed to the speed of the fire - building materials were highly combustible, the configuration of the building allowed fire and smoke to spread quickly, there were no fire barriers, and the lack of an adequate sprinkler system.

Reconstruction of the hotel cost over $50 million, and lawsuits resulted in over $300 million in damages.

As a result of the fire, Nevada passed one of the toughest laws requiring sprinklers and other fire safety measures.  Buildings in Nevada are much safer now, so much so that one person was quoted as saying that "if there's a fire, you've got a better chance of drowning from the sprinkler system".