Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (10 page)

Larocque had graduated from West Warwick High School, where he played on the Wizards football team. His father, a son of French Canadian mill workers, toiled for years as a second-shift grinder at Electric Boat Shipyard in Groton, Connecticut. Young Denis would not follow in those footsteps. Rather, when he was twenty-one, Larocque joined West Warwick’s close-knit fire department, where he rose steadily through the ranks. He married
a local girl, had three children, and settled in the Arctic Hill neighborhood, just blocks from where he’d been raised — only this time, Larocque lived in the neighborhood’s largest house, with a pool in the backyard. In addition to his home, he owned a dozen apartments in town, an industrial park unit in nearby Warwick, and an undeveloped house lot in a desirable cul-de-sac. By all accounts, Larocque balanced personal ambition with public service, coaching youth sports and supporting children’s activities. His friends and co-workers called him Rocky.

The job of fire code inspector in West Warwick has never been regarded as particularly desirable. The fire marshal is responsible for inspecting clubs like The Station whenever a liquor license is renewed or transferred. He examines other licensed businesses like gas stations for code violations and inspects all houses being sold, to make sure they have working smoke detectors. He investigates and reports on the cause of every fire in town. And every time a new building or subdivision is proposed, he has to approve the plans. Hardly as exciting as actually fighting fires, the position of fire marshal is heavy in red tape and unlikely to endear its holder to local businesspeople.

In 1998, when the West Warwick fire marshal’s position came open, Larocque was already one of five battalion chiefs in the department and eligible for retirement. Although the job paid the same as his old position, $42,216, he decided to take it. Once appointed, Larocque brought a new vigor to fire code enforcement that was not exactly welcomed by business owners. Bull-necked and stocky, with a fireman’s trademark mustache, the new fire marshal immediately made his presence known, roaming the town in his official van and busting businessmen for the kind of minor violations that went unchallenged by his predecessor. A few years into his tenure, however, Larocque’s inspection reports document his recommending liquor license renewals at some favored establishments, despite persistent violations. One was the Portuguese American Social and Athletic Club, a run-down bar with function rooms used for political gatherings; another, Evelyn’s Villa, was a restaurant owned by a former town councilman.

In December of 1999 his work took him to The Station. The police had received numerous complaints from the club’s neighbors about noise and overcrowding, and in response, Police Chief Peter Brousseau asked Gerald Tellier, the acting fire chief, to have Larocque review the club’s capacity.

Larocque’s capacity calculations at the Station site were not without precedent. In 1969, the building at 211 Cowesett Avenue was a restaurant called the Red Fox Inn. Its maximum capacity, set by the town fire marshal and echoed by its building inspector, was fifty. In 1981, Ray Villanova opened his
Italian restaurant, P. Brillo & Sons, there, and the town fire inspector rated the building, essentially unchanged in size, at 161 occupants. Come 1991, a new tenant opened a sports bar, Crackerjacks, on the site, and the then fire marshal upped the capacity to 225.

Later would come Larocque’s turn to balance the public’s right to safety against a business’s desire for profits. The Rhode Island state fire code mandates that places of public assembly provide a specified number of square feet per occupant, depending upon how that space is used. If there are tables and chairs, the number of square feet is higher (and, hence, fewer people permitted); if the area is clear of obstructions, less space is required for each occupant. With code book in hand, Larocque set about measuring each room in the club.

On December 30, 1999, he wrote to Police Chief Brousseau explaining his conclusions. Larocque’s letter stated that “in the club’s present layout” the permitted occupancy was 258; however, “this business is allowed to increase this number to 317 by removing tables and chairs from three lounge areas and providing only standing room in those areas.” The calculation allowed seven square feet per standing-room patron.

Larocque signed this letter, as he signed all his official correspondence, “Yours in Fire Safety, Denis Larocque, Fire Marshal.”

Just over two months later, when the Derderians were purchasing the club from Howard Julian, Michael Derderian asked Larocque to further sharpen his pencil and see if he could increase the club’s capacity to 400 for big concerts. Larocque accomplished this and more, raising the building’s limit to 404 occupants “when all tables and chairs are removed from all areas,” so long as a uniformed firefighter was privately hired by the club for all such events. (Nowhere does the fire code allow for relaxation of its limits when firefighters are present.) This time his calculation allowed only five square feet per person by designating the
entire building as standing room
. This was the physical equivalent of fitting 404 people onto half the surface of a high-school basketball court.

The fire code relied upon by Larocque defines “standing room” as “only that part of the building directly accessible to doors for hasty exit,” such as a restaurant lobby or a ticket line where customers stand only temporarily. According to William F. Howe, the chief of inspections for the Rhode Island State Fire Marshal’s Office, the code does not permit an entire building to be classified as standing room.

And, yet, that’s where Sandy and Michael Hoogasian found themselves,
waiting for Great White to go on — in a sea of standing-room revelers so thick that movement was nearly impossible. They, and everyone else with a sightline to the stage, would have to remain where they were until the show finished.

Some Station patrons, uncomfortable with the density of the crowd on the dance floor, managed to position themselves along the club’s south wall, on a raised area normally occupied by tables and chairs. Kimberly and Stephanie Napolitano, thirty-year-old twins from North Providence, were among those on the platform with their backs pressed against the wall. They couldn’t help but notice a strange substance covering that wall from wainscoting to ceiling — corrugated egg-crate-type plastic foam, spray-painted black with flecks of glitter thrown into the paint. The foam ran the length of the south wall, then spread over the entire proscenium arch of the west stage wall, lining the drummer’s alcove and continuing to the right of the stage, across an inward-swinging door with a sign that read:
KEEP DOOR CLOSED AT ALL TIMES
. The stuff even ran up one sloped ceiling pitch above the dance floor — nine hundred square feet in all. This unusual material was the single dominant feature of the performance space — seemingly impossible to be overlooked. And yet it was.

The state fire code requires decorative and acoustical materials on nightclub walls to be flame resistant. It forbids materials “of a highly flammable character” and specifies that the fire inspector conduct a simple “match flame test” on a sample if he has any doubt about a material’s flammability. Under that test protocol, flame may not spread more than four inches up a vertically held eight-inch strip for twelve seconds after a match is applied to its lower edge. Also, “materials which drip flaming particles shall be rejected if they continue to burn after they reach the floor.”

Had the match flame test been applied to the kind of foam behind the Napolitano twins, flame would have consumed the
entire
eight-inch strip in four seconds, leaving nothing but a burning puddle of a napalm-like substance beneath it.

An earlier attempt at sound insulation did, however, catch the attention of Denis Larocque. In March 2000, when the Derderians were purchasing the club, the fire inspector insisted on removal of a black curtain covering the walls of the drummer’s alcove; this, because the club lacked proof of its flame resistance.

The Derderians installed the gray egg-crate foam in July 2000. The first West Warwick fire inspection thereafter was performed by John Pieczarek,
the department’s director of communications, in November 2000. It was done in conjunction with the club’s annual liquor license renewal. Pieczarek’s report makes no mention of the foam covering the entire west end of the club; however, he noted that the door to the right of the stage (which at that time was surrounded by foam) “needed repair.”

A year later, in November 2001, Larocque himself performed the annual inspection at The Station. Again, he cited the stage door — this time, because it swung inward. Again, club employees removed it for the compliance check — then put it back. And again, the report made no mention of the foam covering the entire west end of the club.

Larocque returned to The Station in November 2002 with town building inspector Stephen Murray in tow. Larocque and Murray were not only friends, but Murray had been a tenant in one of Larocque’s rental properties in 2000 and 2001. (That three-unit rental property was noteworthy for having had its electrical system upgraded in 1999 with the help of a town of West Warwick housing grant intended to benefit low-income, Section 8 tenants. Two of its three tenants were Stephen Murray and Larocque’s sister, Jacqueline.) This time, among other minor violations at The Station cited by Laroque and Murray, was, again, the inward-opening stage door. But nothing was said about the foam. On December 2, 2002, a “compliance inspection report” confirmed that all cited violations had been corrected. However, the offending door, removed for that compliance inspection, was immediately rehung by light tech David “Scooter” Stone and bouncer John Arpin at the direction of club manager Kevin Beese.

New England Custom Alarms had been under contract to inspect The Station’s fire alarm system twice yearly, as required by state law. On December 4, 2002, the company sent the Derderians a registered letter explaining that because the brothers had persisted in failing to pay $65 for their last inspection, the company would no longer be responsible for future testing. A copy of this letter was received by the West Warwick Fire Prevention Office — Denis Larocque’s office — on December 6, 2002. If Larocque was aware of the alarm inspection cancellation, it did not cause him to contact The Station before the night of February 20, 2003.

A critical distinction between the egg-crate foam overlooked by Larocque in multiple inspections and other, more minor, violations cited by the inspectors is that the latter could be corrected (if temporarily) without impairing the club’s continued operation. After buying the foam from Barry Warner, however, the Derderians had to regard that wall covering as their key to mollifying the noisome neighbors — and worth preserving at all costs.

Larocque would testify after the fire that he “did not see” the nine hundred square feet of egg-crate foam covering the entire west end of The Station nightclub. He did, however, notice the inward-swinging stage door that had been cited as a correctable violation on two previous inspections. That door was completely covered with the gray egg-crate foam. Because it lacked a doorknob, Larocque would have had to
reach through a hole in the foam
in order to pull the door inward.

CHAPTER 8

SUDS, SPARKS, AND SPONSORSHIP

We’re back! We’re fuckin’ back. Drink all the Budweiser, baby! Who’s got Budweiser? Hey, we’ve got some
HJY
shirts. All right, drink all the Budweiser. Bottled and brewed today, right? All right!
HJY
’s in the house. Bud, Bud Light, drink it all! . . . Jack Russell’s Great White, how about that? Let them hear it in the back there, everybody! They’re coming out in just a few minutes. Keep it on 94
WHJY
, your home of rock ’n’ roll. And drink all the Budweiser in the house.

THIS WAS THE BETWEEN-SET PATTER
of emcee Mike Gonsalves, radio station
WHJY
’s late-night
DJ
, who went by the stage name “Dr. Metal.” Just five feet six, Gonsalves made up for his modest stature with boundless energy and a 100-watt smile. As he tossed T-shirts to the crowd and exhorted them to drink all the Budweiser in the place, directly behind him Great White’s road manager, Dan Biechele, set up an apparatus consisting of cardboard tubes, wires, and a battery. In minutes, the crowd would be treated to some very special effects.

Gonsalves, forty, shared some personal history with Jeff Derderian. Each had gotten his start in broadcasting at Rhode Island College’s low-wattage campus radio station,
WRIC
. Derderian had been its news director, and Gonsalves, the host of a program called
The Dr. Metal Show
. Upon graduating in 1986, Gonsalves joined
WHJY-FM
, a rock format station in Providence, where he hosted
The Metal Zone
every Saturday night and
DJ
’d from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. Beloved by night owls, graveyard-shift workers, and hard-rock aficionados, Gonsalves was the station’s “overnight franchise,” according to its general manager, Bud Paras. Like Mike Hoogasian, Gonsalves had been to a Providence Civic Center concert in which Great White opened for Judas Priest. He considered it one of the coolest shows he’d ever seen. So it was without hesitation that Dr. Metal accepted the invitation to emcee Great White’s appearance at The Station.