Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (28 page)

As a result of the
FTC
’s investigation, the plastics industry agreed in 1974 to cease using the deceptive terminology and to warn purchasers and users of foam plastics concerning possible fire hazards. In a consent order negotiated by the industry with the
FTC
, the foam manufacturers agreed to warn previous and potential purchasers that the earlier deceptive “numerical flame-spread rating” was “not intended to reflect hazards presented by this
or any other material under actual fire conditions” (the only conditions that matter), and that under those conditions, foam may “produce rapid flame spread, quick flashover, toxic or flammable gases, dense smoke and intense and immediate heat.”

Right after the consent agreement was entered, the
FTC
published a proposed trade regulation prescribing new affirmative warnings for foam building products (which, in the case of foam sold to “nonprofessional users” like the Derderians, would have to appear on the products themselves). However, the
FTC
soon abandoned that proposal, noting that the threat of tort liability had “already changed behaviors in the plastics industry,” according to the agency’s then-lead investigating attorney, Eric Rubin. Therefore, as to specific new warnings on foam products sold in the future, the industry would be left to the oversight of the nascent and underfunded Consumer Products Safety Commission or, more likely, to its own devices.

Whatever those devices may have been, by the year 2000, when the Derderians bought their corrugated
PU
foam from the American Foam Corporation, word of its fire dangers had apparently not penetrated the consciousness of the local fabricator (American Foam Corporation — which called it “sound foam” on its invoice) or the end users (the Derderians). While the manufacturer of the bulk foam that was sold to American Foam for cutting into corrugated sheets may have warned that
fabricator
that the foam was flammable, it apparently made no effort to warn potential
end users
of fabricated products (in the case of The Station, corrugated sheets) that nonfire-retardant
PU
foam was not a building material and should not be used anywhere it might be exposed to sparks or flame. And while
PU
foams containing a fire-retardant additive were available at a higher price, American Foam sold, and the Derderians bought, the cheapest, highly flammable stuff.

Less than a year after gluing the bargain
PU
foam to The Station’s walls, Jeff Derderian filmed his television report for
WHDH
in Boston about the fire hazards of polyurethane foam-filled mattresses. Even as he referred to the mattress filling as “solid gasoline,” Derderian apparently failed to connect the dots.

The question of whether fire-retardant
PU
foam would have made a difference to victims of the Station fire was put to the test by the National Institute of Standards and Testing after the tragedy. That federal agency fired sparks diagonally from 15 × 15 pyrotechnic gerbs at sheets of fire-retardant and nonfire-retardant corrugated
PU
foam. As expected, the fire-retardant foam was unharmed. The nonfire-retardant foam — the kind that the Derderians put up on the club’s walls — burst into flames just as seen in the Butler video. The
two foams are visually indistinguishable. Without clear warnings, the general public, including the Derderians, could never tell the two apart.

Foam’s propensity to burn furiously is also the feature that makes it difficult to prove a given manufacturer’s responsibility for a fire. The substance burns so intensely and completely that there is often none of it left at the fire scene upon which to base product identification. In short, you can’t sue a foam manufacturer, no matter how inadequate its product warnings, if you can’t prove it manufactured the particular foam involved in the fire. Unless some foam is available for analysis, the fairly generic product may be indistinguishable from foam of anyone else’s manufacture. Victims of the Station fire would have to meet this legal burden, among many others, if they were to hold any foam manufacturer responsible.

The ashes of The Station were not yet cool when fire investigators began searching for any remnants of the sound foam that had been used by the Derderians to line the club’s walls. All but the smallest scraps had been completely consumed in the blaze. Luckily for investigators, however, the brothers were not the most fastidious of housekeepers. In the building’s basement, under tons of rubble, lay several waterlogged rolls of unused gray corrugated polyurethane foam sheets — the balance of American Foam’s shipment from three years earlier.

CHAPTER 20

THE MISSING

Be absolutely certain of the identity of the deceased. . . .

All notifications should be made in person. . . .

More than one person should be present to make the notification.

DO NOT NOTIFY CHILDREN, LEAVE NOTES, OR TELL NEIGHBORS
. . . .

Do not use ambiguous terms such as “we have lost John Smith” or “he has expired.” . . .

Use terms such as “killed,” “died,” and “dead,” as these leave no questions.

— from the “Protocol for Death Notification” furnished to Station Fire Family Assistance Center personnel

SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF THE STATION FIRE
were broadcast locally, nationwide, and worldwide within forty-five minutes of its outbreak, thanks to a film-sharing arrangement between
WPRI-TV
Channel 12 and other networks. This caused family and friends of Station patrons to flock to the site when calls to their loved ones’ cell phones went unanswered. The first arrivals stood by at the Cowesett Inn while the injured were triaged. Other families quickly filled the waiting rooms of area hospitals, praying that their sons, daughters, husbands, or wives had been transported, alive. Many returned to the remains of The Station the next morning, hoping they would not find a familiar car still parked in the club’s lot.

At daybreak, 211 Cowesett Avenue looked like a battlefield. Blood-stained snowbanks ringed the club’s still-smoldering remains. Burned clothing and first-aid detritus littered the parking lot. Firefighters went about their grim business of extracting bodies from the rubble, proceeding at a somber, measured pace. Television uplink trucks soon surrounded the site; before long, reporters outnumbered firemen. The media circus had come to town, and would not strike its tent for weeks to come.

In any disaster, the first step in identifying the dead and injured is learning just who is missing. Then, bodies or hospital patients can potentially be
matched to absentees. To this end, police recorded the make, model, and registration of every car in The Station’s parking lot, to be run against
DMV
records so that registered owners could be ascertained. That would provide at least a starting point for identifying the missing.

The parking lot registration list was as close to a roster of attendees as the Station fire would yield. But it was woefully incomplete. Additional names would have to come from families, or from persons who had escaped the blaze. Families needed no roster, however, to appreciate the binary possibilities for their missing loved ones presented by a car still in the lot that morning: its driver had to be either dead or burned beyond easy identification.

Identifying victims of a tragedy is much more difficult when biological remains are completely lost, as occurred with hundreds of 9/11 victims. Fortunately,
something
remained of every Station victim’s body. (You know the little name/address slips that passengers are asked to complete immediately before boarding transoceanic flights? Ever wonder why you don’t fill one out when flying over land? The answer has to do with proving who was actually on a plane when remains are lost forever.)

Donna Miele, Michael Hoogasian’s sister, stood in the Cowesett Inn parking lot, trembling in the morning chill. She could not find her brother or his wife, Sandy. Sandy’s car was still parked across the street at The Station — a bad sign. Still, Donna would not give up hope. “Maybe he’s unconscious somewhere,” she told a reporter.

But Miele’s hopes were dashed two days later. Her brother’s body was among the first nineteen identified. Sandy’s took another day to identify. Mike and Sandy — who met Jack Russell at the Doors of Perception studio while Mike received a “flames” tattoo — were two of one hundred Great White fans who would never listen to music again. Their families would always remember where they were when they received the awful news.

For most, it was the Crowne Plaza Hotel in nearby Warwick. At 5 o’clock on the morning after the fire, the American Red Cross and the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency began operating a Family Assistance Center at the Crowne Plaza. The hotel became at once a maelstrom of hope, worry, grieving, and, for some, rejoicing. It was where families went to find their missing.

The scene at the Crowne Plaza was, for the most part, organized and somber. Families gathered around tables in function rooms, each one equipped with a telephone and a box of tissues. Others sat on the floor in hallways,
huddled in quiet circles. Still others repaired to bathrooms to smoke or cry. But the real business of learning victims’ fates took place in the hotel’s grand ballroom. There, an assembly line of graduated despair performed its work with relentless efficiency.

At the first table encountered by families, Red Cross volunteers searched thick binders containing the names of known injured who had been admitted to nine area hospitals. Those fortunate families whose trip along the assembly line ended with that table would scurry out, hastening to their loved one’s bedside.

Families without a match at the first table proceeded to a second, where West Warwick and state police officers helped them complete missing-person reports. Family members then met with forensic specialists in side rooms, where they shared details of the missing person’s height, weight, hair color, and any unique identifying features. Tattoos and distinctive clothing or jewelry would prove important to the process. Names of family dentists were obtained so that X-rays could be requested. (Early on, Rhode Island’s governor, Donald Carcieri, made a public request that every dentist in the state please check his or her messages, so that records requests could be expeditiously filled. Volunteer health department drivers fanned out across the state to pick up dental records and bring them to the morgue.)

Then, most families just waited at the Crowne Plaza. At first, when officials received new information on a victim, they would call out his or her last name in the ballroom, upsetting loved ones and disappointing all others. Eventually, that “deli counter” approach was replaced by one in which a single family representative would be given a sticker to wear on his or her chest with the name of the missing relative. When news, good or bad, arrived, an official would walk through the crowd, scanning tags, until the right family could be discreetly located.

In order to keep reporters from accosting families at the Crowne Plaza, the Rhode Island State Police and West Warwick police closed the main door of the ballroom and allowed access to families only through a side door. Nevertheless, some enterprising out-of-state journalists rented guest rooms at the hotel and attempted to enter the Family Assistance Center under false pretenses. They were detained by police, then evicted from the hotel.

Jason Kinan and his family waited in the Crowne Plaza ballroom for any news of their brother, Joe. Joe was briefly visible on Brian Butler’s videotape wheeling toward the front doors with his friend Karla Bagtaz in tow. The Kinan family had struck out with the list of injured at the first table, filed their missing-person report at the police table, then furnished forensic information
to the mortuary team. Jason was designated to wear the red name tag reading “Joseph Kinan.”

Hours later, a Red Cross volunteer spotted Jason’s tag in the crowd. A patient at Massachusetts General Hospital had been identified as Joseph Kinan. Buoyed by the news, the Kinans immediately left for Boston, one of the very few tag-bearing families to leave the hotel with good news. Their relief would soon be greatly tempered, however, when the family arrived at Mass. General and learned Joe’s condition.