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The Las Vegas Hilton fire on Feb. 10, 1981, came just threemonths after the MGM Grand Hotel fire.
On Nov. 20, 1980, fire spread through the MGM's ground-floorcasino and killed 87 people in an inferno that consumed an area about the size of a football field. That fire remained confined to the ground-floor level of the resort.
By contrast, the Hilton fire started with curtains ignited on the eighth floor in the hotel's east wing. Flames then went up and outside, burning floor after floor.
Of the eight who died at the Hilton, one man leapt to his death, while the other seven died from smoke inhalation. Those seven included three men who suffocated in an elevator lobby and an elderly couple found dead two floors above the fire's origin.
Flames reached as high as the roof of the 30-story resort.
Singer Juliet Prowse cut her Hilton show short that night. Andy Williams was waiting to go on.
Inside and outside the 2,780-room hotel, which was 80 percent occupied for a savings and loan convention that weekend, 500 firefighters battled the blaze.
Guests trapped in high-rise rooms were screaming and smashing out room windows to breathe. Firefighters with bullhorns yelled at them to stay calm and stay put.
The arson-caused, $10 million fire started just after 8 p.m. and was under control about 90 minutes later. It was a Tuesday.
Roy Parrish was leading the troops that night as Clark County's fire chief, a post from which he recently retired.
"The problem is they were two entirely different types of fires," Parrish said last week. "The MGM was a big warehouse underneath a high-rise. The Hilton was true high-rise firefighting.
"We trained on high-rise fires all...