LAS VEGAS - Thousands of guests and employees were evacuated Thursday from a big hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip due to a power outage that lasted hours.
The entire Paris Las Vegas lost power at about 9:45 a.m. when a contractor working in the basement cut into the main power line, Clark County spokeswoman Stacey Welling said.
No injuries were reported, but Welling said fire crews had to rescue 11 people who were trapped in five different elevators at the hotel owned by Caesars Entertainment Corp.
Rich Broome, the company's executive vice president, said full restoration of power was expected sometime Thursday but he was not sure when. It remained out late Thursday afternoon.
"We're trying to keep people out of the casinos because it's pitch black in there," Broome told reporters at a noon briefing.
Some evacuations began immediately after the outage was reported. Welling said the approximately 3,000 people who remained in the building were told to leave Thursday afternoon because the battery power was running low on the building's fire alarm system.
Most of the guests were being sent to neighboring hotels, including Bally's and Planet Hollywood.
Jay Sarno of Santa Fe Springs, California told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he won more than $1,000 on a Keno machine just before the power went out.
Sarno said the casino gave him a voucher to claim his money after power is restored. He said members of his traveling group had to walk up 18 flights of stairs in the dark to retrieve belongings before fire officials ushered them outside.
