Fire alarm goes off in early morning hours at 49ers team hotel ahead of Super Bowl LVIII

The San Francisco 49ers players suffered a rude awakening on Thursday as fire alarms blared in the early hours at their team hotel in Las Vegas ahead of Super Bowl LVIII. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the fire alarms at the Hilton Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa went off around 6 a.m. Though the team did not have to evacuate the building, the alarms didn’t stop blaring for 10 minutes.

The guests were not ushered out of their rooms because, according to a hotel employee, “engineering was able to deduce it was a false alarm and there was no evacuation needed.” The fire alarm was first reported by Niners Nation reporter Akash Anavarathan.

It’s an unfortunate incident for the 49ers who play in a rematch of Super Bowl LIV on Sunday. Luckily, they’ll have plenty of time to catch up on their lost sleep in the next few days. Kickoff isn’t until 6:30 p.m. ET on Sunday at Allegiant Stadium.

49ers find practice fields at UNLV to be less than ideal

Things haven’t gone as smoothly as the 49ers would like so far this week in Las Vegas. While the hosts, the Kansas City Chiefs get to use the Raiders facilities, San Francisco has been relegated to using those at UNLV. The 49ers players have reportedly been unhappy with the condition of that practice field. Though the NFL brought in grass to cover the collegiate team’s turf practice field, the NFL players complained that the field was “too soft.”

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell addressed their complaints on Monday, sticking by the ruling of the experts the league brought in to examine the field.

“We’ve had 23 experts out there,” Goodell said of the UNLV field. “We had the union out there. All of them think it’s a very playable surface.”

According to Yahoo Sports, San Francisco initially weighed options for another facility to practice at before ultimately deciding to stay at UNLV. Kyle Shanahan called it the team’s “best choice” on Wednesday during a pres conference.

“We’re here, we’re practicing on it,” Shanahan said. “Everyone has their preferences. Wish things were better, but we’ll deal with how it is.”

NFLPA president J.C. Tretter cited the league’s current issues between the 49ers and their practice fields as an extension of the overall turf-grass debate. The vast majority of NFL players prefer playing on natural grass.

“(Goodell) said, ‘It’s OK because the field is playable.’ Well, he talked about last week that we need to raise the level to make both [turf and grass] surfaces high quality, then a week later he’s saying ‘it’s OK because it’s playable’ — playable is not the same standard as high quality,” Tretter told reporters this week. “It’s about as low as you can go to say ‘it’s OK.’”