Jan. 31, 2008

Live, from the Monte Carlo fire: Via an apartment in New York

By STEVE FRIESS

As evening fell on what almost was among the most traumatic days in Las Vegas history, a night editor from The New York Times was quizzing me about the piece I had written for Saturday's paper.

He was asking me to get more specific about the precise damage to the top of the Monte Carlo Hotel-Casino when he heard something in my background and said, "Gosh, it almost sounds like you're in New York."

"I am in New York!" I answered.

"What the hell are you doing writing about this thing from New York?" he rightfully barked.

I was wondering just that question myself all afternoon. When the midday fire broke out at one of the least famous resorts in the heart of the Strip, I was sitting in my aunt's 10th-floor apartment in the Bronx sipping a homemade latte and enjoying a little peace after a sleep-in on the first day of a much-needed vacation that fortuitously followed the rush that was the opening of the Palazzo, the re-arrest of O.J. Simpson and, oh yeah, that little election thingy. My nephew's Bar Mitzvah was the next day, so I was resting up for a perilous weekend of the chicken dance and screaming teenagers.

But then my cell started buzzing with editors from various media outlets alerting me to the fact that the Monte Carlo was ablaze and asking for coverage. The first one, from a foreign wire service, made me think the thing was a prank, because at first he said the Montecito was on fire, and I nearly snarked that maybe he shouldn't be watching Las Vegas reruns on work time.

I turned everyone down by sadly explaining I wasn't in Vegas and then started watching the fire with chills and torment on CNN, vexing my astonishing bad luck at being away for a story of this magnitude. In fact, something like this happens without fail every time I leave town. I was also in New York at the bedside of my dying uncle when six kids were shot at a Vegas bus stop in December, and I was in Florida at the bedside of my dying grandfather in July when that kook opened fire inside the New York-New York casino.

The daytime editor at the Times asked my advice on other Vegas stringers, and I dutifully suggested two writers. It was no time to get selfish; the TV showed a fire moving so quickly that it was hard not to imagine this might be Vegas' 9/11, except without the terrorists.

But neither writer answered his phone, so the Times asked if I'd make some calls-to the same people I would've needed to call if I had been in Vegas, including MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman, who was in Washington, D.C. And later, when the fire was extinguished without significant injuries, let alone deaths, I was charged with writing the entire, significantly shorter piece for the paper of record by myself.

Evidently, nobody told the night editor at the Times of this unusual arrangement, and he was understandably perplexed. He wondered how I could describe the fire as well as I had given that I wasn't there, and I did feel ridiculous rendering the answer: "I watched it live on TV!"

I felt ridiculous, but maybe I shouldn't have. There are reporters in India, after all, who cover city council meetings for a newspaper in Pasadena, California.

At least in this case, my view thanks to the chopper cams was undeniably better than that of reporters on the ground looking up. And while I didn't get any comments from displaced tourists, I was able to get local Las Vegan reaction just by putting out a call on a variety of Vegas blogs for folks willing to be interviewed by phone.

I also learned something very offensive in the process: Even in its hour of trauma, Vegas just isn't taken seriously. I was near tears watching the apparent destruction of a major structure and worrying about the pandemonium of thousands of guests and employees having to get out. I assumed that there were tourists in the upper floors who were trapped and possibly dead. That it all worked out okay does not minimize what it looked and felt like in the beginning of the crisis.

But the folks on cable news thought the fire was entertaining. One CNN reporter actually wondered jokingly in the earliest stages whether the Monte Carlo buffet comp he'd recently received in the mail was still valid. Fox News Channel, which carried every O.J. Simpson press conference live, didn't bother to pick up its local affiliate's feed from the briefing by Las Vegas Fire Chief Steven Smith. And, yes, some bozoette on one of those stations-can't recall which-really thought she was clever muttering, "Like Paris Hilton would say, that's hot!" Can you imagine such irreverence if this had been the Sears Tower?

Just as amazing was how quickly the story died the minute it turned out that no humans had. Were I not on vacation, I would be pushing editors to let me do the obvious follow-up: A 32-story building containing 5,000 or so people caught major fire, and everyone got out calmly. And alive.

Of course, that narrative requires the world to acknowledge they have something they can learn from Vegas. That is, something other than whether Lindsay Lohan's been drinking again.

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