Las Vegas casino in the dark for a week

Local media reported Friday that a nightclub at the casino reopened Thursday night.

The outage was caused after a sink in a service area overflowed and shorted a fuse in the tower's power system. The hotel moved to a backup generator that was compromised by water from a fire sprinkler and gave out the next morning.

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The Rio's parent company is Caesars Entertainment. Hotel guests were transferred to other rooms in casinos owned by Caesars, but also to competitors' rooms

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The Rio casino scrambled to find alternate lodging for guests Thursday after a power outage led to the evacuation of 900 rooms just before the busy New Year's Eve weekend.

A fuse shorted in a backup generator that was powering the hotel's Masquerade Tower, said Richard Broome, a spokesman for the Rio's parent company, Caesars Entertainment. The outage affects the fire control systems, so officials made visitors leave their rooms.

"It all went dark, and then we heard a commotion in the hall," Amanda Paulsen, who was staying at the casino with her husband for the holiday weekend, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "We went to look and someone said, 'The power's out, we have to leave.'"

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The timing of the outage was particularly problematic because it came at one of the busiest and most lucrative weekends of the year for Las Vegas

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More than 300,000 visitors were expected to ring in the new year in Sin City, which was welcoming big-name musical acts and putting on an eight-minute pyrotechnic show that features fireworks launched from casino rooftops.

Broome said the Rio was already near capacity. 

The problem first emerged Wednesday when a plugged sink in a service area accidentally overflowed, shorting out the fuse in the main power system and causing a small electrical fire that prompted a more limited evacuation, Broome said. Management then relied on a backup generator, but that was later compromised by water from a fire sprinkler and it too shorted early Thursday.

Patrons in 900 rooms were directed to the lounge of the 1980s-themed musical "Rock of Ages," where they received food, drinks and updates about the situation. By noon, the company determined it needed to move guests to other hotels and started escorting them back to the rooms to retrieve their belongings, Broome said.

Nobody was injured, but emergency responders helped some guests with disabilities get to the bottom of the tower.