Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (30 page)

Perhaps this commingling and loss of “biologicals” was inevitable, given the sheer size of the potential debris field and the imperative for returning the city to function. However, Gould believed that archaeological techniques could be used, at least on a limited basis, to assist in identifying and repatriating victims’ remains and personal effects. With official permission, Gould returned to Manhattan on April 1, 2002, accompanied by a volunteer team consisting largely of Brown University and Brooklyn College graduate students, to attempt a trial excavation at a small site on Barclay Street, next to the
WTC
. They called their group Forensic Archaeology Recovery, or
FAR
. Its mission was “to provide trained volunteer assistance to local authorities at mass-fatality disaster scenes to locate, record and recover human remains, personal effects and other evidence, primarily for victim identification.” Little did they know that
FAR
would be pressed into service again so soon, and so close to home.

The results of
FAR
’
S
Manhattan excavation, like its artifacts, were mixed. It was too late after the event to determine with certainty the order of objects’ deposition. Of the ten pieces of bone found, none was even tentatively
identified as human. What the experiment did demonstrate, however, was that a team of volunteer archaeologists, using established scientific protocols, could prepare for and perform controlled forensic recoveries at a disaster scene. They just needed to be called in sooner.

While his team’s work at Barclay Street failed to prove Gould’s suspicion of widespread human remains in the aftermath of 9/11, fragmented remains were still being found months and even years later, often in quantity, at construction sites and on rooftops in lower Manhattan. Indeed, when the victim identification process officially ended on February 5, 2005, 1,162 victims, or 42 percent of the missing, remained unidentified.

Less than a year after
FAR
’
S
trial excavation at the
WTC
, Richard Gould walked the site of the Station fire with State Fire Marshal Irving “Jesse” Owens. Only six days had passed since the tragedy, and already the site had been disturbed by rescuers, fire inspectors, and federal
ATF
agents. All ninety-six victims who died at the scene had been identified by the medical examiner. But Owens still had important work for
FAR
to do, if the team was up to it.

Owens took the Station tragedy very personally, and his overwhelming objective was to spare victims’ families further pain. His official charge to
FAR
was to gather personal items for repatriation to families. His unofficial, but no less imperative, concern was that the site be absolutely stripped of all biologicals and items of interest to souvenir hunters, once the area was no longer secured. Owens was adamant that charred memorabilia from the Station not appear on eBay or be otherwise exploited. Gould’s
FAR
team accomplished these objectives, and more.

During their tour of the fire site on February 26, Fire Marshal Owens pointed out to Professor Gould the main entranceway of the club, its atrium, stage, and bar areas. He described the general locations of the greatest number of bodies, in the hope that there might be some correlation between them and the physical location of items recovered by
FAR
.

The work would not be easy. Two particular challenges to this “dig” were the absence of any true soil and the punishingly cold weather. Recovered items were encased in a lumpy mixture of ash, charcoal, pulverized building materials, and melted roofing or ceiling materials. Temperatures had not gone above freezing since the fire; therefore, artifacts had to be chipped out in frozen lumps. Fieldwork in archaeology is normally not conducted in midwinter; however,
FAR
’
S
work did not have this luxury. Disasters can occur any time of year.

The
FAR
team arrived on the morning of February 27 equipped with shovels, buckets, three rocker sieves, and one hanging sieve, each with quarter-inch
mesh. They divided the site into five search areas and strung two “baselines” perpendicular to each other across the foundation. The location of any artifact could be established by its distance from each of the two baselines. Rather than separate the area into permanent grids, as in a more traditional archaeological excavation, a portable
PVC
-pipe square, three feet by three feet, was used to delineate each area from which buckets of fill were removed and screened. The team had originally intended to wet-sieve the fill, for which West Warwick Fire Department offered the services of a pumper truck; however, subfreezing conditions ruled out that normally more expeditious technique.

All artifacts, biological and otherwise, were bagged and entered as evidence in a State Police Crime Scene Laboratory van that remained on-site the entire time
FAR
worked there. In this way, chain-of-custody was maintained for all items removed.

On any given day, an average of nine to thirteen volunteers worked the archaeological site. The
FAR
team consisted primarily of Brown University archaeology students with field experience. One had specialized training in forensic anthropology (the study of human bones for legal identification), a skill that would prove useful in identifying human remains. Joining the Brown students were three volunteers from the Providence Police Department’s Bureau of Criminal Identification. The Salvation Army and Red Cross provided food and shelter for
FAR
workers on breaks, while the state police provided site security.

The
FAR
team worked in a proverbial fishbowl, but in total anonymity. No one spoke to the press. Viewers, including bandaged survivors and grieving families, watched the process through the surrounding chain-link fence, sometimes for entire days. Because of this constant observation,
FAR
’
S
protocol forbade any raised voices, or even cell phone calls, from the work area. Anything that might draw attention to finds such as human remains was forbidden. The workers’ professional demeanor remained unbroken throughout their engagement at The Station.

Professor Gould’s concern that firefighting, rescue, and investigative activities might have moved artifacts from their original resting places was allayed in part by an “embedding” phenomenon that resulted from a combination of melted roof materials and freezing temperatures. In several areas of the club, biological specimens and personal items lay within a sandwich of building materials, unmoved from their initial place of repose. Like that archaeological staple, the fly in amber, cell phones and jewelry remained frozen in time
and place at The Station, until chipped out by
FAR
volunteers and screened from their surrounding matrix.

When an object is believed to lie where it was initially discarded or came to rest, archaeologists speak of its having a “primary association” with a location. There is a principle in archaeology that smaller objects tend to resist movement in deposits subject to disturbance. By contrast, larger items tend to be more mobile. Thus, between the size and embedment phenomena, smaller personal items like jewelry and buttons remained close to where they had been deposited during the Station fire — a “primary association,” according to the archaeologists.

Not surprisingly, the areas of the club where most bodies were found were the same areas in which fragmented remains and personal items were most heavily concentrated: a mid-forearm-length black glove, with bone fragments within; a web belt with white-metal buckle; a partially burned baseball cap with the logo “Baltimore Pile Driving.” Health club membership cards and supermarket loyalty cards (readily associated with their owners from scannable bar codes) were common finds. In a corner of the atrium, where fire temperatures had exceeded 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, were found cranial fragments (most likely the result of explosion in the intense heat); elsewhere, a piece of scalp with hair. Jewelry, watch parts, cell phones, eyeglass frames — all remained more or less where they had fallen, preserved in the amber of melted roofing materials.

FAR
’
S
resident forensic anthropologist, Gabriel Flores, assisted with some of the tougher identifications. Among confusing finds were fiber insulation, which, when burned, can resemble human hair; also, white plastic, which, charred, can mimic bone.

The area between the stage and the ticket counter near the front entrance corridor was dubbed by the
FAR
team as the “panic zone” through which terrified rock fans rushed toward the exit. Eyeglasses and cell phones appeared to have been peeled off as patrons rushed across the floor. Few, if any, human remains were found in this area. By contrast, the area next to the ticket counter and the front entrance corridor contained “the highest concentration of human remains and the widest possible range of personal effects.”

Personal effects were repatriated through the medical examiner’s office, which hired an independent firm to photograph each item and produce an album that was shown to each family. If items were desired, they were cleaned and delivered to their owners’ families. One personal item, a cell phone, was particularly troubling. It had nineteen messages on it from a
distraught relative, each of which went something like: “Where are you?” “Are you
OK
?”

One family made a special request of the medical examiner’s office. Could searchers possibly be on the lookout for a distinctive necklace worn by their daughter who died in the fire? Gould’s group kept it in mind, but the task was akin to spotting a needle in a haystack. Days of digging and sifting by the
FAR
team yielded no necklace. It appeared that bad luck just trumped good intentions in this regard.

Some areas proved harder to search than others. Carpet on the floor of the main bar area snagged the team’s excavating tools, greatly slowing the recovery process there. Removal of artifacts from tiled areas of the club was much easier.

The storeroom, where ten bodies were found (and where Dr. Metal was last seen alive), was almost completely untouched by fire. All within it must have succumbed to inhaling super-heated combustion gases. Even if its occupants had wished to use the two fire extinguishers found by the
FAR
team on a shelf there, they would have found them empty. One bore a tag attesting to its most recent inspection — 1995.

Midway through the project,
FAR
received a request that took it beyond its initial humanitarian objectives. The team was asked by the fire marshal to look for any nine-volt batteries near the stage area, which might have been related to igniting the pyrotechnics. The team located three such batteries near the stage, as well as a cardboard gerb tube. It could not be determined, however, if any of the batteries was related to the pyro.

Forensic Archaeology Recovery spent more than a week excavating the Station site. Its work was interrupted by one night of heavy snow and another day of freezing rain. Over the course of their work, the
FAR
volunteers excavated and sieved 340 buckets of fill, recovering eighty-eight discrete personal effects of victims and fifty-four biological specimens. They used the full panoply of archaeological tools found on a dig — shovels, trowels, hand picks, brushes — even tweezers.

The work required a hardy constitution. Depression was as much a hazard as frostbite.
FAR
kept an
EMT
-certified safety officer on-scene at all times to assess environmental risks and treat minor injuries — also, to monitor volunteers’ physical and emotional condition. Team members were not permitted to excavate or sieve alone, so that each could observe a colleague.

The bitter cold caused the volunteers to take regular breaks. Fortunately, there was a propane-heated tent on-site, provided by the Red Cross. By the eighth day of work, however, signs of physical and emotional exhaustion began to appear among the group. On day nine, Gould closed the archaeology operation, the team’s work as reasonably complete as time, resources, and human endurance would permit.