Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (15 page)

I’M WITH THE BAND

MIKE IANNONE HAD COME TO THE STATION
to see Great White, but also to support his friends whose band, Fathead, opened the evening. Mike, who had helped Fathead load-in on previous occasions, was very familiar with the club’s layout, including the stage door on the right. He was also familiar with the use of pyrotechnics at the club, having walked out of a concert there in 2002 when a band called Rebellion used flashpots on either side of the stage.

So, the moment Great White ignited its four blinding-white 15 × 15 Pyropak gerbs in The Station at 11:05 p.m. on February 20, 2003, Mike Iannone knew he was out of there. By all accounts, he did everything right. He didn’t even wait until he saw flames. He didn’t stop to gather belongings. He didn’t seek out friends to join him. He didn’t remain “committed” to the entertainment he had paid to see. He didn’t even head to the door he’d come in by. Rather, Iannone turned to the nearest exit he knew — the stage door.

The stage door at The Station had a history. One of the three exit doors counted by Fire Marshal Larocque in his capacity calculations for the club, it was the exit with one foam-covered, handleless, inward-swinging door and a second, outward-swinging door immediately behind it. The inner door was the one that club staff took down, then rehung, three years running after fire inspections cited it as a code violation. It was also the exit nearest to foam salesman Barry Warner’s house.

From the Derderians’ perspective, the stage exit posed two problems, both of which boiled down to economics. The exit’s doors — both of them — had to remain closed when bands were playing; otherwise neighbors would shut the club down. Left unguarded, that exit could also admit nonpaying interlopers.

The Derderians solved both problems with a simple rule: the door would remain closed any time a band was playing. Between sets, when bands were
loading in or out and recorded music was playing at much lower volume, the door could be used — by band personnel only. As to the door’s function as an emergency exit — well, that might still be possible. If you were with the band.

Enforcement of the “band door” rule would be the province of the club’s bouncers, some of whom were experienced and responsible. Others, however, were no more than undertrained and overbuilt club “regulars” who, as often as not, performed their function for free beer and a chance to wear black
EVENT SECURITY
Tshirts and exercise authority over patrons. Apparently, “security” had a better ring to it than “barfly.” For this subgroup, training was necessarily kept simple. One rule sufficed: no one but “band” was allowed to use the stage door.

When Mike Iannone saw the pyrotechnics erupt, he sprinted for the stage door. As he neared the door, a bouncer grabbed his arm and barked, “Band only exit.” One forceful shove sent Iannone stumbling back into the crowd. As soon as he regained control of his feet, Mike headed toward the club’s front doors, soon to be joined by hundreds of others. The delay resulted in his getting as far as the front corridor, between the inner single door and the outside double doors, when people behind him lost their footing and toppled over onto him, trapping him in place. Iannone would not move from that location under his own power. By the time firemen extricated him, one of Mike’s hands, exposed to blowtorch-intensity heat, was burned beyond hope of salvage.

Fred Crisostomi, a painter, and his girlfriend, Gina Russo, a medical secretary, had called The Station at 10:20 that night to inquire if there were any more tickets available. Sure. Just come down. Ten minutes later, Andrea Mancini collected their cash (there were no “tickets” left), stamped their hands, and they were in. Fred and Gina bought drinks and worked their way to the apron of the stage just in time for Great White’s pyrotechnics.

They were among the first to appreciate the difference between fire and fireworks. Both immediately put their drinks on the stage and headed to their right. Crisostomi was familiar with the club’s layout and guided Gina to the stage door. A bouncer stood in front of the door, arms crossed, blocking the way. “This is for band members only,” he declared. “The club is on fire! Let us out! Open the door!” they screamed. The bouncer held his ground.

Gina knew they could not spend time arguing with him. She turned and headed toward the front door, with Fred pushing and shoving her through the crowd. Sounds of screams, breaking glass, and popping flames filled her ears. A “black rain” fell from the ceiling, setting people aflame. Gina’s sweatshirt, jeans, and Nike sneakers offered scant protection. She felt Fred’s hand in the middle of her back, shoving her toward the door, as he yelled, “Just
go
!” When all progress stopped in the front hallway and Gina toppled, there was no one underneath her as she hit the floor. She said a prayer for her two boys and passed out from the searing smoke. Eleven weeks later, when she emerged from a medically induced coma in a Boston hospital, Gina would learn that Fred Crisostomi had perished in the club. Russo herself sustained horrific burns to her head, torso, limbs, and lungs.

The Station’s approach to providing concert security was somewhat ad hoc. The day of the fire, club manager Kevin Beese called up his buddy Scott Vieira to see if Scott wanted to help out as a bouncer for the Great White concert. Vieira had done it a few times before, for “a couple beers,” and it beat hanging around the house — which was what he found himself doing quite a bit of, ever since 1994 when he injured his ankle in a workplace accident at a General Motors plant. Since then, he’d been on disability.

The Ocean State is, perhaps, the only one in which unemployment is described by an active verb, as in, “Wadda you doin’?” “ ‘I’m
collectin
’. ” A disability pension is like hitting the Rhode Island unemployment jackpot. It is regarded by some with a mixture of envy and awe.

Vieira and his wife, Kelly, lived less than a mile from The Station. When Kelly dutifully went off to her work each day as a physical therapy assistant, she’d leave a job list for her husband. The list kept him “pretty busy,” but after a while, Scott would get bored, what with “everybody being at work,” and wander down to The Station to hang out with Kevin Beese and the club regulars. Afternoons, when Vieira was done working in his own yard, he’d head over to The Station. Most nights, by 5:30 he’d be at The Station’s bar with fewer than a dozen others. When it snowed, the employment-disabled Vieira would help Beese shovel the walks and open the place up. Sometimes Vieira would carry cases of beer or buckets of ice around the club. Other days he’d help Beese take keg inventory in the basement. It wasn’t a formal arrangement (as might appear on any employment or tax record), but more an unspoken one whereby Beese would occasionally draw Vieira a beer without charge — a performance bonus, of sorts.

Vieira’s work at The Station may not have been formalized, but his status as a privileged “regular” certainly was. He was literally a card-carrying
VIP
, having been issued laminated
ID
cards attesting to that status by both Howard Julian and, later, the Derderians. It was not a membership he had to pay for. As Vieira explained, “It was just given to the regulars that were there all the time spending money on the off hours.” Membership had its privileges. Vieira never paid a cover charge, and “regulars” paid a lower price for their drinks. “There was no reason to charge people at night if they’re already paying their dues throughout the week sitting there keeping the business [going],” he observed.

On the afternoon of the Great White concert, Scott Vieira helped the band load in, rolling heavy cases across the frozen parking lot and into the building. He went home for dinner, then returned to the club at 7 wearing a black T-shirt that read
THE STATION
in white letters across the chest and
EVENT SECURITY
across the back. Around 8:30, he took up position at the right-hand corner of the stage, more to watch his friends in Fathead than to perform any real security function. By 10:30, though, he was assigned to the area leading to the band room and stage door, where he stood with his wife, Kelly, nearby. As Vieira explained it, his “main goal was to watch forward and make sure that nobody came into the area that didn’t belong.” From prior experience, he could recite the Band Door Rules: “Just make sure no one came through the door that didn’t belong there, or a non-band member. Just so someone wouldn’t open it, mainly while music was going on . . . to allow sound to go out through an open door; or make sure no one snuck in while the door was supposed to be closed.”

According to Vieira, when the fire broke out, he went to the band room to get water and emerged with several bottles, only to drop them to the floor when he realized that they would have no effect. By then, Great White had left the stage and exited through the band door. By his own account, Vieira then moved into the dance floor and atrium areas, yelling for patrons to “come this way” through the band door. His wife, Kelly, was, unfortunately, not among them. Vieira denies having directed anyone away from the stage door at any time that night.

But someone did direct Rob Feeney and his fiancée, Donna Mitchell, away from the band door. Feeney and Mitchell, along with a group that included Pamela Gruttadauria (whose cousin had delivered the foam sheets to The Station for his employer, American Foam Corporation, three years earlier), arrived at the club around 8, but first headed across the street to the Cowesett Inn for dinner. At 9:40, they entered The Station as the second band, Trip,
was setting up to play. Feeney saw the stage door exit was open, with band personnel coming in and going out.

Following Trip’s set, Rob and Donna watched “Dr. Metal” and his
HJY
interns throw merchandise from the stage and hype up the crowd. They stood near the right side of the stage when Great White went on. Shortly after the gerbs ignited, Rob told Donna, “Look behind the sparks — the wall is on fire!” He saw Jack Russell try to throw water at the blaze. As the flames began to lick the ceiling, Feeney shouted to Donna, “That’s the closest door,” and pushed her toward the stage door. Just then, a black T-shirt-clad bouncer, “about 5’10” tall, with short dark hair and a cigarette in his mouth” put his hand on Donna’s shoulder and told her, “You gotta use the front door.” Feeney was directly behind Donna when this exchange occurred. His instinct was to challenge the order, but Donna had already turned toward the front door, so he followed her.