Fire at Resorts World Las Vegas Comes Days Before Grand Opening

Posted on: June 20, 2021, 12:09h. 

Last updated on: June 20, 2021, 01:55h.

Larry Henry Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Gaming Business, Legislation, Politics, Regulation.

With its grand opening less than a week away, Resorts World Las Vegas on the Strip was the site of a fire this weekend.

Resorts World fire
Black smoke is seen rising from a fire at Resorts World Las Vegas on Saturday. The resort is set to hold its grand opening on June 24. (Image: KTNV-TV)

The fire at about 6 pm on Saturday occurred in a storage area where building materials and mechanical equipment are kept, according to KLAS-TV. The fire was behind the parking garage.

Eyewitnesses posted photographs and video on social media sites, showing flames and billowing smoke at the site of the 3,506-room resort on the northwest end of the Strip.

The red-tinted Resorts World Las Vegas is just south of Circus Circus and the smaller Slot-A-Fun. The $4.3 billion resort is set to open on Thursday.  

No one was injured in the blaze, which did not spread to other structures, according to fire officials. The cause is under investigation.

The fire occurred as the temperature in the Las Vegas Valley soared to 114 degrees on Saturday, tying a record for that date set in 1940. Las Vegas has been in the midst of a heat wave, reaching 100-degree temperatures for the first time since Oct. 1, 2020. 

Eyewitness Makayla Williams told the television station the fire created a traffic jam on the Strip.

We saw the fire at the building and there was smoke, and it took us around the Strip causing a 20-minute back up,” Williams said.

James Banks, a visitor from Phoenix, noted that the fire created a large amount of smoke.

“Looked like something had been burning for quite some time, and all we saw was plumes of smoke in the sky,” he told the television station.

Las Vegas resident Chris Walton said the fire was “scary”  because the hotel-casino is new.

“They shouldn’t be having these problems,” he said.

‘Sexual Wellness’

Resorts World Las Vegas is the first new hotel-casino to open on the Strip since December 2010, when the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas began operating. In February, “multiple” people were hospitalized from smoke caused by a fire at the Cosmopolitan, officials said. Smoke in the hallway on the 51st floor came from a balcony at one of the rooms.

At its opening, Resorts World will feature more than 40 places for food and beverages. These include a vegan ice cream store and a bubble tea shop called Tiger Sugar. 

The site also will include a Kardashian Kloset pop-up store. The store will sell items once belonging to reality television personalities in the blended Kardashian-Jenner family. 

Also included is a Pepper sexual wellness shop with licensed sexologists on staff. Pepper also will have employees in a “key holder” role. In addition to other duties, this job requires employees to “engage guests in conversations about sexual wellness.”

Former Mafia Site

Resorts World was constructed on the Strip where the Stardust Casino once stood. At one time, the Stardust was overseen by Chicago oddsmaker Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal for Midwestern crime families. 

This era was portrayed in former New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi’s nonfiction book, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas. Pileggi and director Martin Scorsese cowrote the screenplay for the 1995 movie Casino, a fictionalized account of the book.