Mark Rusin, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, stands in front of Bally's on Nov. 11. Rusin was a 25-year-old Las Vegas police officer on the day that the building, which was then known as the MGM Grand Hotel, burned in a fire that remains Nevada's deadliest. Photos by ISAAC BREKKEN/REVIEW-JOURNAL Dice and a chip, both covered with soot, are former police officer Mark Rusin's mementos of the MGM Grand Hotel fire.

Editor's note: Mark Rusin was a 25-year-old Las Vegas police officer assigned to the Las Vegas Strip the day the MGM Grand Hotel burned. This is his first-person account of that day, where his grim duty was to recover bodies. After four years as a police officer, he joined the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives in 1983, where he is still a special agent, now based in Tucson, Ariz. His former patrol partner was Bill Young, now the Clark County sheriff. Assigned as the western regional coordinator for the ATF ballistic imaging program, he has served as a consultant for the popular television show "CSI." He is working on his second nonfiction book. This is his first published article.

I was already in plain clothes when the rear door of the Metro South substation burst open and Sgt. Martin yelled, "Jesus Christ, the MGM is burning!"

Dark smoke was everywhere on the Strip and Flamingo Road. It was just after 7:15 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 21, 1980, and the MGM Grand was on my patrol beat.

My squad had just finished our 10-hour shift. We wanted to suit back up and hustle to the MGM, but the sarge sent us home to get some sleep. As we walked to our cars, he called out, "You guys stay close to your phones!" All the while our relief squad -- and every other vehicle equipped with lights and sirens within a 20-mile radius -- was screaming toward the MGM.

By the time I got to my house in Green Valley, the death toll had reached 27. There was no way I could sleep. My phone rang at about 11 a.m. and the desk sergeant told me to be back at the station by 3 p.m. Little did I know what the night would bring.

I got to the station early. Word was spreading that we might run out of body bags. The fatality count now topped 50, and a temporary morgue had been set up at a grade school near Harmon and Paradise roads.

At 3 p.m., we were briefed on our assignments by the watch commander. My squad was chosen to go to the hotel and search for bodies, entering from the roof via helicopter. I was given an ax and a flashlight and told the gurneys were on-site.

When we got to the staging area, each squad member was handed two gurneys and told to board the helicopter. It was a weird feeling to look down at the dead hotel among the glitter of its neighbors. From the sky it resembled a burned-out tenement in the middle of a large carnival.

We landed on the MGM rooftop, dimly lit by generated light. As I entered the landing, balancing a gurney on each shoulder, flashlight in one hand, ax in the other, I heard a voice from the stairwell below say, "Go down to 19." I wasn't even sure how far that was, but I started walking. By the time I got there it seemed a lot farther than seven floors. A fireman called out, "We need seven over here!"

He pointed down the pitch-black hallway and said, "Go to the elevator and watch your step." The gurneys were heavy as hell by then, and I nearly stumbled over the seven bodies in the hallway. I dropped the gurneys near the elevator and was handed a body bag.

As I shined my flashlight down the corridor it was like the scene of a bad horror movie or an episode from "The Twilight Zone." I remember the faces of the dead and the look of horror in their eyes. Until that day I never knew that if you died in horror, your face actually stayed that way.

One poor lady was wearing eyeglasses and the right lens was cracked like a spider web. She was completely gray and looked about my mom's age. I couldn't help but think that this was someone's mom. I knew I had to stop that thought or I couldn't go on.

We had been told in our briefing that day that several people had died in the stairwells as they tried to make it to the rooftop. One guy had died trying to shield his wife from the smoke, and they both just collapsed, with his arms wrapped around her. All of these deaths were from smoke inhalation, as the flames never made it up that far.

The squad we had just relieved already had placed toe tags on the victims in the hallway. Because the hotel records burned, we attached some type of I.D. to each body. A wallet, credit card, receipt -- anything was good as long as it was bagged with the right person.

They paired me with officer Stubbs. We bagged the bodies, placed them on gurneys and carried them back up to the rooftop.

We worked our way up one floor, breaking down doors and searching for bodies.

One man, about 55 years old, had thrown a chair through his window. He had ripped the curtains off the wall and tied them end to end to his bedsheets and pillowcases. He lay there, just inside his broken-out window, clutching his "escape rope" with both hands.

Stubbs found a young lady who'd died in her bathtub. She tried to survive by jamming wet towels under her doors to keep the smoke out.

We carried five or six people from the 20th floor and a couple of people from 21 and 22. The smoke seemed to have been thinner the higher up you went, so the people on the upper floors probably made it to the rooftop. I had seen footage on TV earlier that day of people clinging to helicopters and being brought to safety.

There was this one room on the 24th or 25th floor I had to break into because the safety latch was still on. I jumped back and whispered, "My God!" I pulled back the covers of a young couple who had died in their sleep, still locked in an embrace.

I had to compose myself, as I knew I would soon be breaking them apart and putting them in bags. Her nightgown was at the foot of the bed. On the dresser was a soot-covered bouquet of red roses next to a large photo. I picked up their photo and started to cry. I couldn't help it.

I was thinking how nice it would be if I had one great big body bag, so I could put them in it together.

We finished sweeping the penthouse suites. Luckily, all those people had survived. Looking out the penthouse windows on the Flamingo Road side of the building; there were media trucks and satellite dishes as far as I could see. My folks back in Chicago called me the next day to say they saw me on "Nightline" or something. They were seriously concerned about how I was doing. I lied and told them I was just fine.

It was nearly 5 a.m. when we were relieved and placed on security detail near the front doors of the once-opulent hotel. In those hotel rooms there was money, casino chips and jewelry everywhere. If I were a thief, I could have retired the next day.

The casino had burned so fast I heard that people actually died with playing cards and drinks in their hands. It was like a fireball. I had to see it close up, so Stubbs and I used our coffee break to take a look around. We didn't know then, of course, that what we were witnessing would turn out to be the worst disaster in Nevada history.

It was eerie walking into the charred, gray casino. I had stayed at the Grand several times before I moved to Las Vegas. Stubbs and I walked up to the very craps table where I had tried to learn the game just a year before. It was burned black with melted dice still on the table.

I've seen some sad and crazy things in my 25 years of law enforcement, but nothing that affected me more than that fire back when I was a rookie.