Forty years ago, Monday, June 5, 1978, began as a warm, early summer day in Winnemucca according to the National Weather Service. The skies were spotted with billowy white clouds and the breezes blew lightly. Winnemuccans went to work and school, just like the week before. Travelers streamed into town from the east and west on this pre-Interstate 80 day via Winnemucca Boulevard. But, by the day’s end, many would be shedding tears and wondering where fate would cast them next.
Walt Johnstone, who was the Winnemucca Volunteer Fire Department chief back then, recalled that day during a recent interview.
According to Johnstone, at about 1:30 p.m. in the central kitchen of the Star Broiler Restaurant and Casino, at the corner of Winnemucca Boulevard and Melarkey Street, a cook trying to move a large pan filled with bacon grease off a hot stove spilled some grease onto the cooktop. The grease ignited and sent flames up into the exhaust hood.
The installed automatic fire suppression system responded and sent extinguisher down onto the cooktop, quickly putting out the initial fire. Trying to clean the cooktop of the extinguisher chemicals, the cook moved the still-full pan, again. Another splash hit the still hot cooktop. A second ignition of the grease sent flames up into the hood’s exhaust system, again.
This time there was no extinguisher chemical left to douse the flames.
Flames traveled quickly through the ventilation system and a two-foot crawl space between the false ceiling separating the first and second floors of the building. The alarm was called into the Winnemucca Volunteer Fire Department.
Chief Johnstone, working at his auto repair business just down Bridge Street from the Star, responded immediately. He arrived and in this first “size-up” report to dispatch said, “Send everything we’ve (expletive) got!” as he watched flames shooting skyward from the rooftop exhaust vents.
Johnstone also called for mutual-aid to fight the conflagration. Units from the Winnemucca Rural Fire Department and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) responded.
Meanwhile, inside, the initial word of a kitchen grease fire was not unusual for the staff of the Star.
Jerry Erquiaga, now 63, was a waiter at the coffee shop counter back then. He said during a recent interview that the occasional grease fire was no reason to panic. “We’d had grease fires before and they (the kitchen staff) had always put them out, he said. “So we were not too worried.”
But, with the second ignition, there was no turning back.
According to news reports in The Humboldt Sun and other papers of the day, staff and guests were, at first, staying at their posts and gaming machines. But, once the smoke and flames began engulfing the building’s interior, evacuation began in earnest. In fact, according to The Humboldt Sun’s Mark McMahon, reporting on the fire in the June 6 edition, customers were forced to leave winnings at the slot machines. As well, staff left coin and currency in the casino cage and vault, and personal belongings elsewhere in the building.
Janelle (Denny) O’Dell — then just 20 years old — was a casino cashier working the change cage along with another young lady named Brenda. The first sign of trouble she witnessed were customers running through the casino yelling, “FIRE!”
At about the same time, firefighters outside cut the power to the building — a normal procedure at a structure fire.
“When the firemen cut the power to the building the electric door locks on the cage would not open, and we really started to worry,” said O’Dell. She also said a telephone repairman was in the cage, repairing phones. He began trying to jimmy the electric lock from the inside.
Meanwhile, casino employee Jerry Legarza, ran to the Star’s warehouse to get a ladder to help free the trio. According to O’Dell, about 10 minutes passed, and Brenda became more distraught. Finally, the telephone repairman successfully opened the lock and the three ran to safety.
Firefighters surrounded the building with hoses to attack the fire on the exterior, while BLM crews pumped chemical fire-retardant inside the inferno. The amount of water being drawn from the city water system was so great that low water pressure became a factor in fighting the blaze, according to Chief Johnstone (in the original reporting).
About an hour after the initial alarm — and thousands of gallons of water being pumped into and onto the Star — the roof collapsed down into the still-burning ruins, taking the outside walls inward with it. Johnstone said this saved the other exposed businesses, the Nixon Hall (on the west) and the Ferris Hotel (on the south).
Onlookers and employees of the Star lined the streets surrounding the blaze and watched and cried while what many described as the “entertainment center of Winnemucca,” burned to the ground.
Erquiaga, a 10-year employee of the Star at the time of the fire said, “It was the centerpiece of Winnemucca. We had a showroom and cruise ship entertainers were brought in to perform for residents and travelers.”
At 4:30 a.m., on the morning of June 6, firefighters had completely “overhauled” the fire scene after 15 hours of work. At that point, Chief Johnstone decided that it was safe enough to release the site to its owners and security staff. Firefighting overhaul is the process of searching the fire scene to find the complete extension of the fire, extinguishing any remaining embers and beginning the salvage operation to reduce loss.
Erquiaga remembered his father, Louie Erquiaga and Harold Larragueta, both senior staffers at the Star, using pick-axes and sledgehammers to break into the casino vault from a charred outside wall to secure the casino’s operating cash. This memory was documented in reporting from the (then) Reno Evening Gazette.
For Erquiaga, born and raised in Winnemucca, it was truly a sad day.
“I’d been working at the Star since I was 14,” he said. “I was mentored by Ethel Hornbarger (then the food and beverage manager for both the Star Broiler and the Winner’s casinos). She taught me so much about how to serve and help customers. But, like everyone else, I was out of a job. My father had contacts at John Ascuaga’s Nugget Casino in Sparks at the time. So, he called and secured another job for me there. I went to work in Sparks for the remainder of the summer, then to college at Texas Tech University after that. I’ve only been back to Winnemuca for family visits since then.”
THE AFTERMATH
Sharon Mackie, owner of the Star at the time of the fire, announced plans to build a new 11-story casino-restaurant-hotel just weeks after the remains of the Star had been cleared from the famous corner.
But, it never came to fruition.
Bob Cashell and his Wild West Enterprises took over the property and built what in 1981 was The Star Casino and remains today as the East Hall of the Winnemucca Convention Center.
Displaced workers from the Star Broiler were moved to the Winner’s Casino, while Winner’s staff took shorter shifts in order to help the former Star employees support their families. Today, the Star Broiler has been reincarnated as a dining room within The Winner’s Casino.
Johnstone retired from the Winnemucca Volunteer Fire Department in 2011, and still lives in Winnemucca. Erquiaga graduated from Texas Tech with a business degree and returned to gaming industry in Reno. Today, he is a senior staff member at the Peppermill Casinos properties in Reno/Sparks. O’Dell is still in Winnemucca, a long-term employee at Walmart working in the apparel department.
But, 40 years after the fateful events of June 5 and 6, 1978, in the words of Sharon Mackie, “the old gal is gone.”
Some in Winnemucca believe it is still awaiting a replacement.
