On closer inspection, he discovered the fire. One of the workers on a marble and tile replacement crew entered the Deli to check for broken tiles and noticed a flickering light. Unfortunately, the Deli no longer was open 24/7 and the fire began while the Deli was closed for the night. Had the Deli still been open around the clock like it had been when the hotel originally opened, the fire would likely have been spotted and contained easily. The fire began there and burned for a while, undetected. The vibration of the rotating cabinet had caused the wiring to fray and the wires rubbed together. That wiring powered the refrigeration unit for a nearby food cabinet display.
The fire had been sparked by wiring inside the soffit. On November 21, 1980, early in the morning, a fire, that had started hours earlier, broke through a wall soffit in The Deli and roared into the casino. It was the deadliest hotel fire in Nevada history and the second deadliest in American history. There were, by estimates, 5,000 guests staying the luxury hotel on the morning of the fire. But in 1980, an early morning fire changed forever the way we remember that beautiful hotel.
