LAS VEGAS, Sept. 9 - They have been taking long, soapy showers, sleeping like hibernating bears, tossing back a few beers and gawking at the over-the-top architecture here for the last few days.
None of the roughly 50 New Orleans firefighters, emergency medical technicians and 911 telephone operators - some with family members - seems to care much about gambling, just halfheartedly trying an occasional slot machine.
They came here for a break - an all-expenses-paid vacation that some had to be ordered to take - hoping for a little distraction from the horrors of Hurricane Katrina and its floodwaters.
For some, though, the glamour and wealth of Las Vegas only underscore their own misery, the lost homes, the missing relatives and the uncertain future of a city they love.
"This trip isn't helping me," said Glynn Vazquez, 46, a fire engine driver and fire pump operator. "I'm living in Las Vegas, and my mother and father and brother are living in refugee camps."
"The department told me I had to take a week's vacation. There are no hotels open for hundreds of miles. My wife left me early this year. I can't find my parents," Mr. Vazquez said. "They tell me my brother, Dale, is somewhere in Oklahoma. I had no place to go. So I came here."
Mr. Vazquez said he thought Las Vegas would take his mind off his worries. But he was wrong.
"I'm hurting for all my neighbors," he said. "My house sits on 18-foot stilts. The stairs got knocked down. But my house is dry. I had to tell a few people their houses are not there anymore. They cried."
Most of all, the first batch of firefighters and other emergency workers to take the paid holiday arranged by Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans is haunted by the things they could not do in the first days after the storm. As they try to enjoy the glitz and overflowing casino buffets here, they struggle with feelings of frustration, shame, helplessness and despair over how they were overpowered by the wind, flooding and violence. So often, they said, they could not help people and save lives and property - the essence of what drew them to the department.
"We would be rolling on a fire," said John Cardinale, a 42-year-old firefighter, "and there would be people hollering and waving, trying to get you to stop, screaming for help. But we couldn't stop. They would have overwhelmed us. They were just scared. They wanted to get out of there, and there were just too many of them. It eats at you."
The firefighters tell of harrowing rescues and of breaking up nighttime looting. They also tell of breaking into a restaurant to commandeer slabs of bacon and crates of eggs to stave off hunger - something that other firefighters and police officers said they had to do, as well.
A group of 30 firefighters was cut off from the rest of the world for most of a week, Mr. Vazquez said, surrounded by deep, murky water, their department radios dead. They crowded into a fire station built to hold four of them.
Commanders feared that they were lost in the storm. But they had food and water and spent their days in boats rescuing people and chasing looters from gasoline stations and other stores sharing their dry island.
Everyone in that group of stranded firefighters except Mr. Vazquez passed up the Las Vegas trip to spend time with family, he said.
In the neon world of Las Vegas, the emergency workers are easy to spot. They wear navy blue shirts emblazoned with "New Orleans" and their department name. As they stroll around, people stop them and offer praise and sympathy.
Shortly after Mr. Vazquez checked into the Boulder Station hotel and casino on Wednesday, Beth Riley, 62, hugged him and told him how much she loved visiting New Orleans and eating beignets at Caf
