Friday Night Excitement in Vegas

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Right? What happened January 2, 2009 to the Utah Wheelin' Jazz needs to stay in Vegas.

We left home early Friday to be sure we would be in Las Vegas in time to watch the Utah, Alabama Sugar Bowl (Utes won 31-17!) We arrived, checked in, and got to our room in time for the kickoff.

A little bit after halftime, we started noticing a scent that was very unpleasant. I had turned on the fan a bit earlier so Jeff and Darrell thought that somebody was smoking outside. It did smell like a bad stogy but I was unconvinced.

I made my way around the room and found that one of the ceiling lights was extremely hot to the touch and the smell was growing stronger. We could also see that our room was filling with smoke. I told Jeff to call the front desk and just as he was connected, the smoke alarm went off.

He reported the smoke alarm and they told him they would be right over. In the next 10-15 minutes that we waited, Darrell mentioned that at least we knew there would be a quick response in case of an actual emergency. Yes it actually took about 15 minutes for a response.

When the maintenance man showed up, I told him I thought it was the light fixture. But I had turned it off 20 minutes ago and the smoke was still getting thicker. The smell was unbearable. At about this time, another employee showed up and mentioned that someone had called in saying they had left some food on the stove with the burner on.

They left for about 10 minutes then came back and confirmed that the tenant directly behind us had indeed left the burner on. By this time, we were outside trying to watch the game through the window. We had already grabbed all our bags and gear as we waited for the building to go up in flames.

We were in room 1108. Mike, Rod, and Jason were next door in 1109 but they were at Sam's Town watching the game. I had Tina (our friendly front desk person) let me in to 1109 so I could see if their room was ok. It seemed fine. I texted Mike and told him what was going on. He thought I was joking.

Tina offered us another room and had another one assigned. We moved over to 1109 to continue watching the game when we realized it was starting to smell foul as well. The room closest to ours starting to fill with smoke. We quickly moved Rodney and Jason's belongings out of the room and closed the door. I then called Tina to let her know that we needed 2 rooms.

All things work out well. After they moved us into new rooms, Tina let me know that the person who had left the burner on was none other than the General Manager and he comp'd our rooms.