This is damn interesting.

Headphones recommend it.

Downstairs in the casino, little remained of the MGM Grand Hotel's former glory.

In the early morning hours of 21 November, 1980, a fire had broken out in the Las Vegas landmark,

ripping through the lounge in an explosive wave that instantly killed everyone in the area.

Bodies sat frozen in front of what had once been slot machines,

now no more than blackened pillars jutting upward from a flow of melted slag along the floor.

The room's plastic and chrome-plated decor, it turned out, had been as much a facade as its promises of riches.

Fortunately, the Clark County Fire Department had responded immediately, and the blaze never spread beyond the first floor.

From where David Demers and his fire investigation team stood on the 23rd floor,

no one would have even felt the temperature rise.

Why then were they surrounded by corpses?

When the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino first opened in 1973, it was the largest hotel in the world,

with advertisements claiming more square footage than the Empire State Building.

The first floor boasted a movie theater, two stages, and five restaurants, yet these were no more than satellites to the main attraction,

a casino the size of three football fields.

The hotel's 26 floors stretched into the sky as a bold declaration of not only wealth but vitality.

Las Vegas had beaten back the desert, and its newest crown jewel seemed impossible to tarnish.

Unfortunately, when the fire struck seven years later, the MGM Grand would live up to its

record-setting reputation. By the end of the day, 85 people would lose their lives, and approximately

700 would be injured, including 14 firefighters who had to be hospitalized.

It was the deadliest hotel fire in the nation since the introduction of modern fire safety codes in the 1940s.

...