Hotel Monte Carlo Hotel in Las Vegas was built in 1995. Three years later, on 25th January 2008 a fire broke and destroyed some parts of the hotel. It is believed that the main factor for the start of this fire was the welding that happened on the on a catwalk at the roof high screen parapet wall of the Monte Carlo Hotel (Beitel, J., & Evans, D., 2011). The investigation results were never published. However, the questions remained. What were the things that contributed to the spread of fire trough out the building?
The investigators examined the constructions material samples from places adjacent to where the fire was burning. The laboratory samples reports revealed that the fire was fueled by the construction materials that did not fully comply to fire regulations standards. The materials included Exterior Insulation and Finish System (EFIS) and decorative architectural details. The decortive details were horizontal bands at the top of the external wall, the horizontal band above the uppermost guestrooms on 32nd floor, the horizontal band at the 29th floor, the decorative columns between 29th and 32nd floor, and each of two base wall assemblies (Beitel, J., & Evans, D. 2011). To some extent, all of these materials failed at the laboratory tests as non-complying materials for this type of building.
The building design flaws that contributed to the spread of the fire included horizontal bands that extended alongside the façade which helped the fire to spread. This is the place where the fire first started. In addition to this, the building design flaws further included many other types of ornamentation such as the railing at the top of parapet wall and medallions between the windows on the 32nd floor (Beitel, J., & Evans, D., 2011). Alongside horizontal bands, these helped the fire to spread laterally and to ignite the cladding materials and ignite the flat wall aria that was located above.
As the fire broke between 29th and 32nd floor, the fire brigades along with hotel’s personnel had a difficulty to reach the fire site with hoses and fire extinguishers. This hindered the fire response. Fortunately, the interior sprinkling system did not let the fire to spread to the interior of the hotel, which helped prevent greater damage to the object.
My recommendations to the building design and maintenance would include better testing of the materials that were used in construction. All of the installed materials must fully comply with building regulations standards. Moreover, I would suggest that the horizontal bands are either divided by completely non-flammable materials of that they are removed completely from the facade. Additionally, I would recommend that the curtain walls and other installed systems are thoroughly tested before they are applied. In conclusion, my final recommendation would be that all precaution measures are applied before interventions such as welding, take place on the hotel premises.
References:
Beitel, J., & Evans, D. (2011). The Monte Carlo Exterior Facade Fire. Fire Protection Engineering, 22-32.
