This wasn't Vegas, this was Tahoe. My grandparents owned a home there not long after this happened, and I remember there being a lot of talk about it. But when this happened I was just a kid. This also wasn't long after Mount St. Helen blew up. My parents and I lived in Carson City at the time. I remember the ash falling. At first I thought it was snow! There was no ash from the Harvey's explosion though. It wasn't that big :p
The schadenfreude is killing me. Im sure many working class people lost their jobs. A hotel was demolished causing substantial monetary loss for its owners and investors. The FBI had egg on their face.
It wasn't demolished. The structural integrity was not damaged, $18M was spent on repairs, and it reopened about 10 months later. Given the owner's attitude towards his staff, it seems likely they would all have been re-hired if they were still looking for work.
The only other viable outcome I can see is if they gave the extortionists the money and caught them later — and they certainly would have caught them. But there is no guarantee the same scenario would not have unfolded with the bomb going off. And having given in to the demands of the extortionist probably would have inspired a wave of similar crimes.
