Bellagio hit with power outages New Year’s Eve

Sun file photo

The Bellagio on the Las Vegas Strip.

Map of Bellagio Resort and Casino

Bellagio Resort and Casino

3600 Las Vegas Blvd. S. , Las Vegas

Vegas Inc. coverage

The west wing of the Bellagio’s main tower had intermittent power outages throughout the afternoon and early evening Saturday, leading to the New Year’s Eve day closure of the buffet and the loss of power to several hundred hotel rooms, said Gordon Absher, vice president of public affairs for MGM Resorts.

Despite the outage, which lasted from about noon until 7:30 p.m., all of the property’s fine-dining restaurants remained open. All New Year’s Eve events went off as scheduled, as did the opening of the property’s newest nightclub, Hyde Bellagio.

Lights remained on within the casino, although a bank of slot machines temporarily lost power, Absher said.

Some hotel guests were moved to other rooms within the 3,933-room hotel. Others were transferred to MGM Resorts’ properties elsewhere on the Strip. Some guests were permitted to use the Bellagio spa to shower for the evening.

“It was something within the Bellagio, itself. Our engineers discovered it and addressed it as quickly as they could,” Absher said, noting that he was unaware of the cause of the outage.

“It was not a blackout. These sorts of things happen at your house, your business and at resort hotels,” he said. “The key thing is to measure how the staff responds.”

Beginning on April 11, 2004, the Bellagio’s hotel and casino lost power for three-and-a-half days, forcing the property’s temporary closure and the transfer of guests to hotels throughout the city. That outage began at about 2 a.m. on Easter Sunday.

Investigators from the Clark County Building Division later identified the cause of that incident as a “degradation of material” used to connect power cables that ran alongside the resort.

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