He couldn’t help pointing out that his casino-hotel’s implosion was the 13th since 1993 in Las Vegas.ĭon’t expect any happenings on the site on any future Friday the 13ths, he joked. He said he didn’t really know what kept the structure standing.Īnthony Schlect, corporate safety coordinator for Burke Construction, said he was investigating.ĭoumani showed a sense of humor about the not-so-perfect implosion. The 200-room casino-hotel opened in 1970 as the Royal Inn and was called the Debbie Reynolds - for its one-time owner - as well as the Greek Isles and the Paddle Wheel.īut despite the detonation of 4,400 pounds of explosives, the elevator core just dropped about four stories and stayed standing.
Most of the 12-story Clarion casino-hotel crumbled in a pre-dawn explosion designed to clear the site off the Strip and near the Las Vegas Convention Center for new construction. “It’ll be knocked down some way or another because it’s a safety hazard,” Doumiani said.
With no wrecking balls immediately available, demolition crews are wrapping cables around the tilting structure and hoped to pull it down by the end of the day, Clarion hotel-casino site owner Lorenzo Doumani said. LAS VEGAS - Workers were hoping Tuesday that a crane and cables could finish a job that a 2-ton explosive punch didn’t quite do: Reduce an elevator shaft to rubble like the rest of an imploded a Las Vegas casino-hotel around it.
