VIDEO: It was just after 7 a.m. on Nov. 21, 1980, when the Clark County Fire Department received and responded to the call of a fire in a restaurant on the casino floor of the MGM Grand Resort and Casino. That morning, retired Clark County firefighter and paramedic Jim Perkins was just getting off his shift from Station 11 when he was called back in to assist.
“The fire was smoldering and burning for a very long time before it finally broke out and got the air it needed, and the dragon got set loose,” Perkins said. Part of a small team that specialized in high-rise rescues, Jim Perkins was among some of the first on the scene. He and his partner were assigned to get inside and begin evacuating people to the roof.
“We got in on the 14th floor and the smoke was about six inches off the floor, so you had to crawl down the hallways of the hotel,” Perkins said. “The first thing we seen was the elevator in the lobby of the 14th floor. There was probably 12 to 14 fatalities piled up in front of the elevator doors.” The documents from that day show that within six minutes of the fire being discovered, the entire casino area was engulfed in flames, burning at a rate of 15 to 19 feet per second.
KTNV-TV ABC 13 Las Vegas
