If you're like millions of Americans, you'll soon visit a favorite website to secure travel reservations.

Even now, you may be trying to make sure you don't forget something for that special trip: Room with a view? Check! Around-the-clock room service? Check! Heated pool and spa? Check!

You might think you have it covered.

The Los Angeles Fire Department asks you to go just one step further, by always staying in a fire safe hotel or motel.

LAFD wants you to be as safe as the Feds!

The Hotel and Motel Fire Safety Act of 1990 mandates that Federal employees on official travel must stay in public accommodations that strictly adhere to life safety requirements specified in the legislation.

Why the law?

• In 1946, the worst hotel fire in U.S. history took place at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, taking the lives of 119 people.
• In November 1980, 85 people were killed at the MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas.
• One month later, 26 people died in a fire at the Stouffer's Inn in New York.
• In February 1981, only three months after the MGM Grand Hotel tragedy, another Nevada hotel - the Las Vegas Hilton - was the site of a major fire, where 8 people died, and over 600 people were injured.
• On New Year's Eve 1986, a fire raged in the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, killing 97 people in the course of just 12 short minutes.

Still not convinced?

Investigations in the aftermath of the MGM Grand fire revealed that had the hotel been fully outfitted with automatic sprinklers, the damage from the small electrical fire would have been a puddle of water.

The fire in the Dupont Plaza tragedy moved with such speed that the hotel's casino patrons were dead before the local fire department had even been notified. Testimony following the fire indicated that the blaze would not have posed any threat to life at all, if smoke alarms and a sprinkler system had been in place!

Then again, maybe you already knew that.

What you may not know is how to access the Hotel-Motel National Master List that Federal employees (and Los Angeles Firefighters) use. It's no more difficult than visiting:

http://apps.usfa.fema.gov/hotel

Submitted by Brian Humphrey, Spokesman
Los Angeles Fire Department