A “small fire” broke out in the early morning of Friday at the under-construction MGM Cotai casino resort, the property’s promoter MGM China Holdings Ltd confirmed in an email to GGRAsia.
In its email reply on Friday, MGM China said the fire “was contained very quickly and caused minor damage”. The casino firm did not respond to a question regarding whether the fire had the potential to delay the opening of the Cotai property.
The HKD26-billion (US$3.33-billion) MGM Cotai, being built in Macau’s Cotai district, will be MGM China’s second casino property. MGM China currently operates a single property, MGM Macau, in the city’s traditional downtown casino district.
Grant Bowie, chief executive of MGM China, told GGRAsia last week that MGM Cotai’s construction should be able to meet its fourth-quarter deadline for opening, despite the disruption brought to Macau by Typhoon Hato.
According to a report by the Chinese-language radio service of Macau’s public broadcaster TDM, the fire broke out in the early morning of Friday. Firefighters arrived at the scene at around 5am and extinguished the blaze in a storage room on the first floor of the construction site. No injuries were reported, according to TDM.
Macau’s fire service said it suspected the fire was caused by overheated drill chargers that were kept in the storage room, TDM reported. The blaze caused damages to the walls of the storage room, as well as to the tools kept there.
