Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (12 page)

Early in his tour, Butler stepped onto the club’s stage, camera on shoulder. He dearly wanted to get three or four seconds of usable “B-roll” (background) footage of the crowd from a performer’s vantage point. The only problem was the gestures flashed by the hyper-excited crowd. Most on the video give the two-fingered “devil’s horns” sign associated with heavy-metal bands; some spoil Butler’s shot with a single finger. All are pumped to the max by beer, Dr. Metal’s between-set giveaways, and the crescendo of recorded music blaring through the club’s speakers.

As Butler’s camera pans stage left, it stops just short of where Dan Biechele was standing while he inserted electric matches into the plastic caps of four gerbs. A few feet behind him, also out of camera range, stood Jeff Derderian, whom Biechele asked for the balance of $2,500 due before Great White took the stage. Bespeaking a cash flow dependent upon the real-time status of ticket and liquor sales, Derderian told Biechele, “I’ll have it for you in a little while.” Biechele was used to venues operated on a shoestring.

As Butler’s camera traverses the dance floor, it captures male patrons in leather vests and tank tops. Women wear summer tube tops in deference to the club’s cumulative body heat. Everyone holds a drink — some, two. Smokers abound. Two patrons, standing near the apron of the stage, sport “Jack Russell ‘For You’ Tour” shirts, apparent leftovers from his abortive solo album tour. Others wear Budweiser caps recently thrown from the stage by Dr. Metal and his
WHJY
associates.

At the monitor mixing board stands Paul Vanner, The Station’s soundman. Craggy-faced and bearded, with shoulder-length black hair and sunken eyes, Vanner wears a shirt emblazoned with the name “Human Clay,” the band for which his friend “Grimace” Davidson had recently set off pyrotechnic gerbs at the club. He urges the cameraman to speak into a nearby microphone. Beer-fueled patrons taunt Butler, “Hey, film me, man!” “We’re on
TV
, man!”

Tracy King stops at the thirty-two-channel club sound mixer, kidding a fellow bouncer about the complex, pretuned system. “Stand up here and make believe you know what you’re doing, like I am,” urges King, smiling. “Move a switch — I dare you!” A few seconds later, Gina Gauvin strolls through the shot, natural red mane flowing across her black-clad shoulders and pale skin. The mood of anticipation is palpable.

King then leads Butler’s camera to the back bar, which is attended by Julie Mellini, Paul Vanner’s roommate from years past. Mellini’s waist-length brown hair cascades over her three-quarter-sleeve blue top. She can’t resist playfully sticking her tongue out at Butler’s camera. High-test silliness is flowing tonight, as much as Budweiser.

A string of low-voltage lights forms a rectangle on the ceiling above the back bar. Below them a glowing Anheuser-Busch eagle spreads its wings over the bar’s rear wall, next to a neon Marlboro longhorn: West Warwick meets Old West. Alongside the wall-mounted remnants of a smashed electric guitar from a previous concert, a clock face rimmed in blue neon hangs. Its hands point to 10:45.

Shot girl Rena Gershelis passes before Butler’s lens, her tray of test tubes containing rainbow-colored liquids held head-high. Shining pink lipstick, wide-set model’s eyes, and frosted tresses complete the picture. She flashes a too-wide grin, mugging for the camera. No one can stay serious on such an upbeat night.

Bouncer King parts the crowd further, leading Butler into the club’s dart room, where doors to the back storeroom are flanked by autographs of the rock band the Fixx. Through one storeroom door emerges bar-back Michael Jandron carrying a case of beer to replenish Julie Mellini’s stock. By prearrangement, Butler “chases” him through the crowd, creating a high-energy, almost frenzied visual effect. In so doing, his camera sweeps briefly past the door to the kitchen, inside which the viewer catches a glimpse of that room’s well-hidden exit door. Briefly visible at Mellini’s back bar is a red wall-mounted fire extinguisher, a good sixty feet — and hundreds of patrons — between it and the stage.

Later in the tape, Butler’s camera rounds the corner behind the ticket desk, entering the main horseshoe bar area. A basketball game plays on the corner
TV
, below which the youthful radio station interns gather, clad in black hooded sweatshirts with oval “
HJY
” logos on the front. The kids appear perfectly relaxed.

Butler’s camera sweeps over the horseshoe bar’s front windows. All three have neon beer signs — Bud Light, Miller Light, Coors — blocking their upper
halves. A large metal Molson Canadian sign adorns the bar’s back wall, and a string of low-voltage lights mimics the back bar’s ceiling halo.

Tending the main bar on this, her thirtieth birthday, is Dina DeMaio. She wears a translucent coral chiffon top with matching hair band — more conservative and elegant than any of her patrons. With her prominent cheekbones and perfect smile, it’s easy to see why Dina is at the main bar. She’s an attraction in herself. Checking on a couple seated before her, she asks, in typical Rhode Island waitress-ese, “You guys all set?”

DeMaio, the single mother of a seven-year-old son, was nothing if not industrious. First in her family to graduate from college, she worked full-time as a legal secretary while studying to become a paralegal. Dina began working odd nights at The Station three months earlier to make some extra money for herself and her son.

As Butler’s camera pans left, it captures Jack Russell’s guest-list acquaintances from Denny’s: Rick Sanetti, his wife, Patty, and their young niece, Bridget. Bridget’s blond hair falls midshoulder over her light-blue rib-knit top. A black leather bag is slung over her right shoulder. As the twenty-five-year-old gestures to her aunt and uncle, her silver hoop earrings sparkle beneath fine wisps of hair.

Butler’s video passes the Sanetti party, then zooms in on the beer taps as crew-cut club manager Kevin Beese, wearing a black “
EVENT SECURITY
” T-shirt, draws beer into a large plastic cup. Beese sacrifices as much beer to spilled “head” as he leaves in the cup. Before the camera leaves the main bar, its focus settles on an exit sign above the area’s single outside door, then, returning to the polished surface of the bar itself, it zooms in on the watch-clad wrist of a man stirring his drink. The timepiece reads “10:50.” In the background audio, one can hear Dr. Metal launching into his introductory spiel for the featured act: “We’re back . . . we’re fuckin’ back.”

Before returning to the stage and dance floor, Butler walks his camera toward the ticket counter attended by blond, smiling Andrea Mancini. Her husband, Steven, had finished his set with the local band Fathead an hour or so earlier and is helping check
ID
s. Mancini’s bandanna-clad bandmate, Tom Conte, and Conte’s girlfriend, Kristen Arruda, are relaxing near Andrea’s desk. A West Warwick policeman, Anthony Bettencourt, stands beside the ticket desk in uniform shirt, radio microphone clipped to the epaulet on his left shoulder. Hired as a “private detail” by the Derderians, Bettencourt is supposed to project a police presence and maintain order. At his side is another town cop, Mark Knott, seen in profile in his Gore-Tex patrol jacket
with an American flag patch on the right shoulder. Knott was on routine patrol that night and stopped in to assist Bettencourt’s rock ’n’ roll detail with a “security check” — just in time for the main act.

On the wall behind Andrea Mancini hangs a framed photograph of the Beatles in profile, circa 1970; a crudely block-lettered sign on her desk announces, “
TONIGHT GREAT WHITE, TRIP, FATHEAD $
17.” The wood-paneled partition dividing Andrea’s diagonal ticket desk from the entrance corridor (leaving only a thirty-three-inch opening through which patrons are admitted) is formidable — almost chest-high.

Butler’s video documents the following pertinent history: At 11 p.m., Great White’s soundman Bob Rager cues a
CD
of prerecorded Great White music. As its volume builds, the band’s instrumentalists take their positions on the darkened stage: drummer Eric Powers in an unbuttoned gold metallic shirt; rhythm guitarist Ty Longley with shoulder-length brown curls flowing over his black vest; bass guitarist David Filice wearing a long-sleeve black shirt; and lead guitarist Mark Kendall with shaved head and sunglasses. At 11:04, Station light man Scooter Stone “bumps” the stage lights, creating a strobelike flash at random intervals, as he had been instructed by Great White manager Dan Biechele. (Biechele had explained to Stone in a preconcert briefing that pyro would be ignited soon thereafter, at which time Stone was to bring up full stage lights.)

At 11:05, guitar feedback signals the entrance of Jack Russell, who bounds onstage, wireless microphone in hand. Great White slams into the opening chords of “Desert Moon,” and Dan Biechele touches the second of two wires to a battery terminal.

Brian Butler, standing four rows back in the crowd, shoots video straight at the stage. His tape shows four pyrotechnic gerbs set off from the floor at center stage just in front of Powers’s drum alcove. Initially, the gerbs’ intensity produces a video whiteout. The camera’s iris takes a moment to adjust to the glare, but within five seconds of the gerbs’ ignition, small flames are visible on the foam-covered front corners of the drummer’s alcove where sparks from the gerbs have struck them. The flames, no larger than candles, start about five feet up the walls.

At fifteen seconds post-ignition, the gerbs cease sparking, as designed. Butler swings the camera to his right, revealing the closed stage door and a darkened exit sign above it. Just three seconds later, the flames on the corners of the drummer’s alcove, previously candle size, are now over a foot high.

At twenty seconds, David Filice is seen staring at two-foot-high flames to
stage left. The foam at stage right is now being consumed by twin two-foot tongues of flame, which Ty Longley notices for the first time. Kendall and Russell remain unaware, strutting and playing on as flames race above the lintel of the drummer’s alcove and onto the upper proscenium arch.

At twenty-three seconds, the video shows flames licking up inside the ceiling of the drummer’s alcove and leaping up the proscenium arch. Much of the crowd remains transfixed, still gesturing in “devil’s horns” fashion. However, one redheaded female in the front row clutches both hands to her head in dismay. She is among the first to appreciate that flaming walls are not part of the show. Over the next half minute the crowd’s demeanor will shift from festive, to curious, to terror-stricken.

At twenty-five seconds post-ignition, Butler’s video clearly shows flames consuming the egg-crate foam three feet above the drummer’s alcove lintel. Filice looks back intently at drummer Powers, willing him to abandon his post in the alcove. Kendall and Russell remain oblivious of the growing peril.

Twenty-six seconds after ignition of the gerbs, smoke fills the cathedral ceiling area over the dance floor and begins to billow beneath the dropped ceiling into the remainder of the club. Butler starts moving with his camera toward the main door.

At twenty-eight seconds, formal-wear salesman and amateur bodybuilder Joe Kinan is seen on Butler’s tape turning to his longtime buddy, Karla Bagtaz. He wheels to his left toward the main door with Karla at his side. In a few seconds Kinan will take off his leather vest and wrap it around his friend to protect her.

At the thirty-six-second mark, Butler’s camera is near the ticket booth, shooting straight toward the stage and its door. The stage door is now wide open, an exterior light illuminating the frigid blackness beyond. Great White suddenly stops playing. Russell finally notices the flames engulfing the west wall and utters his last words of the concert: “Wow. That’s not good.” A master of understatement, Russell.

Forty-one seconds after Biechele ignited his pyro, Russell and Kendall are still seen onstage, Russell ineffectually splashing one wall with a water bottle. Fifty seconds after ignition, the building’s fire alarm is triggered, sounding a piercing horn and illuminating strobes around the club. At fifty-seven seconds, Dan Biechele, who had run offstage looking for an extinguisher, jumps back onstage briefly. Butler’s camera, always facing the stage, appears to stop in one location for eight to ten seconds, during which pause Erin Pucino, the Derderians’ long-suffering gas-station clerk, can be seen attempting to get
past the cameraman toward the door, her face contorted in the expression of Edvard Munch’s
The Scream
. Butler’s camera thereafter moves past the ticket desk and out the front doors in a wave of escaping patrons.

When Brian Butler exited through the front doors he was trailed by thickening, head-level smoke and a throng of increasingly concerned patrons. A few yards behind him in the pack, Erin Pucino was no longer moving of her own volition but, rather, as part of a viscous flow of bodies squeezing between Andrea Mancini’s angled ticket counter partition and its opposing wall. As the smoke changed in seconds from gray to black, people inside the club believed that all lighting had suddenly been switched off. In fact, the smoke from the burning hydrocarbon-based plastic foam was so perfectly opaque that no light from the ceiling fixtures could penetrate it. The lights remained on. They simply could not be seen from twelve inches away.