The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas Goes Up in Flames, Two People Hospitalized

Smoke rises after a fire on the outside pool area of the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas hotel-casino Saturday, in Las Vegas. The person that was taken to the hospital didn’t suffer any burns, but smoke inhalation. The Cosmopolitan has a second pool, the Boulevard Pool, outdoors on the fourth floor.

But Welling said there are no local or national codes related to outdoor decorations like the artificial landscaping that surrounded the 14th-floor Bamboo Pool, which Clark County fire department spokesman Greg Cassell likened to “liquid gasoline”.

“We are not surprised when we see these products and the way they react to fire”, he said.

Officials are unsure what started the fire, though the cause may have been electric and ignited by the strings of lights that were wrapped around the flammable trees.

“Had we not had the wind, this might have been a much smaller problem”, he said.

The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas says the Bamboo Pool on the 14th floor reopened at 10 a.m. with full service except for its West Bar.

Those codes also govern poolside cabanas, said county spokeswoman Stacey Welling, with rules including size limits, distance between cabanas, where cabanas can be located and automatic sprinkler systems.

The fire station’s proximity to the development, adjacent to the CityCenter complex of hotels and casinos and just 45 feet from The Cosmopolitan’s pool deck, “contributed greatly to the good outcome that we had”, he said. “The staff was pretty calm and under control”.

However, Naylah Tuaoa-Medeiros had a more chaotic experience when she was evacuated from her 35th-floor room.

The Las Vegas area has prided itself on intense firefighting and stringent building codes since a 1980 fire at the original MGM Grand hotel killed 87 people. “The building is on fire!,'” she recalled to the RJ. “There was no sense of urgency, there was no flow”.