All-night lockdown on Strip
WHEN Alex Biffin finally got to leave an all-night Las Vegas hotel lockdown, he walked out into a city he didn’t recognise.
The ex-Gold Coast 31-yearold – now a Thunder from Down Under male revue performer in Vegas – was in the middle of post-show photos with fans when the massacre started unfolding nearby that would go on to claim 59 lives.
It was just after 10pm Sunday (4pm Monday AEDT) and he spent the next eight hours locked in the Thunder’s residency showroom at Excalibur Hotel & Casino. With him were his fellow performers, and several hundred women who had just watched their sold-out nightly show.
They didn’t walk out onto Las Vegas Boulevard until just before 6am as the sun came up.
“It was just an eerie feeling when we were walking out of the casino, it was just complete silence. It was weird,” he said.
“I have probably been up at that time of the morning more than I care to admit but by the time we left there were still a lot of police barricades, they weren’t letting people on the Strip.”
Speaking to the Bulletin yesterday morning, the former Australian Outback Spectacular show horse rider said he and some of the Thunder boys were planning to donate much -needed blood being requested by local hospitals.
“There is still a very sombre and sad feeling in the air around here,” he said.