Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (22 page)

Among those near the front doorway when the crowd tipped “like dominoes” were John and Andrea Fairbairn. They were “an easy five steps from the door if they had been on their feet” — but they were not on their feet. John and Andrea were pinned to the floor, with John on top of his wife and another girl who lay motionless, spent from her struggle. Another man was yet below Andrea. The smoke was so thick that the only light came from the door opening. With the “sound of a freight train,” a flame front ignited flammable gases over their heads, raining burning roofing and ceiling tiles on them all, singeing their hair and backs.

When a flaming piece of building material fell on the face of the girl underneath Fairbairn, he swiped at it twice, causing her to begin moving again. That slight movement freed his trapped leg, allowing him to wiggle one foot from its sneaker. He finally broke completely free.

But now only one of the Fairbairns was free. John turned back to the densely packed mass of humanity. He grabbed his wife under her armpits, and wrestled her from the pileup. Fairbairn dragged her to the parking lot below, where they both collapsed, exhausted.

Outside the scrum, Patrolman Bettencourt struggled to untie the knots attaching the Budweiser banner to the railing in front of the main doors, enabling people to slip under it to the parking lot several feet below. Terrified victims in the front of the stack of bodies reached out, imploring
someone — anyone — to grab their arms. Several people attempted to, but were driven back by the smoke and heat, as well as by their natural fear of being clutched and held within the killing zone. One would-be rescuer was Jason Nadeau, a twenty-seven-year-old Pawtucket resident, who had earlier exited the club with his girlfriend. As he peered through the smoke filling the entrance corridor, Nadeau could dimly see Andrea Mancini, calmly standing at her position behind the ticket counter. He was the last person to report seeing Andrea alive.

Robert Cripe, a truck driver from West Warwick, had come to The Station with his girlfriend. Cripe managed to spring free of the front door just in front of the pileup, but his girlfriend, Sharon Wilson, was trapped at the bottom of the pile, unable to move. Cripe removed his leather jacket and extended it to her. With each of them pulling as hard as humanly possible, Sharon managed to wriggle free of the bodies crushing her torso. She emerged alive and terrified, but without pants or shoes.

When Patrolman Knott heard kicking at the atrium windows, he extended his folding metal baton and smashed one of the few breakable low glass panels, clearing shards from its frame. Out tumbled three or four people. Knott pulled out several more, burned and unresponsive. He reached into the smoke, so thick and black that he worked by feel alone, pulling on anyone or thing within reach. He and a “heavy-set guy” pulled victims a dozen feet away from the club’s north wall; others dragged them farther toward Cowesett Avenue and safety. The last leg Knott pulled through the window was that of a bar stool. By then, the atrium was unsurvivable. It had been all of two minutes since Great White ignited its pyro.

Robert Riffe was in the crush of patrons forcing their way toward the front doors when he was stopped within inches of the outside doorframe. Riffe, twenty-two, had been an intern at
WHJY
a year earlier, but this night he and his close friend, Ryan Fleck, had come to The Station on their own to hear Great White. Riffe lost sight of Fleck in his rush to the doors. The narrow corridor to the front doors was fed from two sides — one from the performance space to the west and the other, from the horseshoe bar to the east. At their confluence all movement stopped.

Riffe managed to get his head and torso out the main door, so that he was breathing fresh air, but could move no farther. His legs were caught among
the bodies wedged into the doorway. One man who had already escaped grabbed his arms, but quickly gave up. Somehow Riffe was able to turn onto his back, still in the middle of the stack. He reached desperately upward toward another man, Chris Scott, who pulled — and Riffe budged a little. Encouraged, Scott pulled harder, screaming, “Come on. You can do it! Get out! Pull, pull!” Even though Riffe’s legs were pinned within the pile, he was able to kick his shoes off. This gave him enough room to slip free.

Once free of the pileup, Riffe realized that his friend, Ryan, was still behind him, trapped and now burning. He stood frozen, screaming Ryan’s name and, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Staggering in shock toward his car, Riffe was stunned to see Ryan waiting for him by the vehicle. He had somehow escaped ahead of Riffe. The two young men hugged, then turned in horror to see people tumbling, bloody and aflame, through the club’s windows.

Patrolman Knott saw that no further survivors would exit the atrium windows. The heat emanating from that area had begun to melt the plastic front bumper of a car parked nearby. He turned his attention to the front doors, where a scene from Dante’s
Inferno
was unfolding. Bodies were stacked such that only a foot or two remained between the top of the pile and the ceiling. As unburned gaseous fuel met oxygen-rich outside air, flames erupted from that small opening. Knott grabbed “one or two arms” sticking out from the middle of the pile, but none would budge. Then, he dragged a “thin guy with stringy black hair” over the top of the stack, his back afire. Turning again to the stack, he found the
next person’s
back already on fire. Everyone within the pile was screaming to him for help. Knott removed his Gore-Tex jacket, afraid that it would melt onto him. In fact, roofing tar from The Station’s entranceway did just that, dripping onto both the trapped and those attempting rescue.

Elizabeth Arruda had come to The Station with her boyfriend, Derek Silva, and their friend, Tom Marion, a twenty-seven-year-old Wal-Mart furniture department manager. All three had been up front near the right corner of the stage when Great White set up their instruments. But Elizabeth had a headache, so the group moved back toward the main bar immediately before Great White began its abbreviated set. When the pyro went off, Arruda thought the special effects strange for such a has-been group and small venue. When flames appeared on the walls, Tom Marion said to her, “Oh, my God, I
think the stage is on fire,” and immediately turned Elizabeth around to move her toward the front doors. She could not believe her ears when she heard some people saying, “Wow, this is so cool.”

Arruda held on to Derek Silva’s jacket, and Tom Marion clung to her side as the trio moved with the surging crowd. When they got as far as the front hallway, the smoke obscured all light. Elizabeth covered her face and held fast to Derek’s jacket. Tom told her, “Just hold your breath; we’re almost at the door.” Arruda was horrified to be stepping on fallen bodies — people who had been overcome by the smoke. Others around her screamed, “I can’t die like this.”

When they got near enough to see outside light, there was a stack of people in their way. Derek Silva climbed over the pile, but became wedged on top. He managed to grab an outside railing and free himself, but Elizabeth was left behind. Tom Marion picked her up and pushed Elizabeth over the top of the human stack, but her sneakers got stuck. Derek Silva pulled on her arms with such ferocity that she feared their dislocation, until finally she slipped out of her sneakers and popped free, arms and back seriously burned. Her friend Tom remained trapped behind the pileup.

Several survivors who escaped the crush of the front doorway described a particularly terrifying phenomenon. Just as they began to make progress toward freedom, they felt themselves being “pulled back” into the suffocating scrum by people behind them desperate for any handhold or leverage. Similarly, anyone climbing over the stack effectively propelled others beneath him backward. With death licking at their backs, it was every person for him — or herself.

Erin Pucino was still trapped in the pileup. She lost contact with her friend Laurie Hussey in the smoky blackness, then found herself wedged in the pile with a man beneath her and several on top of her. Her arms, shoulders, and head extended from the front doors. Erin could breathe, but she could not escape.

Several people pulled on her arms, but her torso remained pinned. One man attempted to distance himself from the smoke and blistering heat (and, perhaps as well, from desperately grasping hands) by removing his jacket and offering it to her at arm’s length. It was no help. The same man was, however, able to free his girlfriend from beside Erin. But Pucino remained trapped, both legs wedged tightly as if in a giant vise.

With smoke billowing over the top of the human pyramid, Pucino finally wriggled one leg free, then the other, until rescuers’ traction on her arms pulled her free of her co-prisoners. Her legs completely numb from the crush,
Erin dragged herself down the club’s concrete steps, then pulled herself to her useless feet by grabbing a car bumper. As she turned back toward the front doorway, where seconds earlier she had been captive, Pucino saw it completely engulfed in flames, silhouettes writhing within.

Late-arriving Gina Gauvin had made it as far as the front doors when she was carried over the crest of the toppling human wave, then trapped with her head and arms outside the pileup. Rendered unconsciousness by smoke, she never felt the flames consuming the flesh of her scalp, torso, and arms. Rather, her next conscious sensation was cold water from a fire hose, pounding her face. Revived by the water, Gauvin kept yelling that she was alive. But the firemen were unable to pull her loose before removing several people from on top of her. Once they freed her from the stack, firemen lay her on the ground and hosed her down in the 20-degree cold. She would eventually emerge from a medically induced coma six weeks later, having been treated for third-and fourth-degree burns over 60 percent of her body.