Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (5 page)

Warner or his wife called police with noise complaints numerous times when Skip Shogren owned the club. When Howard Julian operated it as the Filling Station, the Warners continued their crusade in letters to the town council. By the time Julian sought to transfer the club’s liquor and entertainment licenses to the Derderians, the Warners had had enough and vocally opposed the transfer unless something was done about the noise, parking lot fights, and overcrowding.

Transfer of a liquor or entertainment license in West Warwick requires sign-offs by the building inspector, the fire chief, and the police chief. In 2000 the police chief was Peter Brousseau. He spoke with Mike Derderian
in May of that year, “strongly advising him that his entertainment license would not be approved unless he corrected the noise problems.” “He is going to speak to the neighbors to work on issues,” wrote Chief Brousseau in a memo dated May 12.

On a quiet afternoon that same month, Barry Warner and his son, Matthew, were sitting on their back porch when two clean-cut young men rounded a corner of the house and introduced themselves. They were Jeff and Mike Derderian. They’d just bought The Station, you see, and they wanted to assure Warner that they would be “good neighbors.” Warner listened as they explained how they “were very proactive” and wanted to do a good job running the club. At one point, the brothers offered to buy him an air conditioner so that he could keep his windows closed, and the noise out, on summer nights. Warner passed on that. Then the Derderians gave Warner their personal phone numbers and stressed that if noise were ever a problem, he should call them directly, rather than the police.

The Derderians’ awkward social call on Barry Warner was drawing to an uncertain close when Warner spoke up. “One option might be to use polyurethane foam for sound insulation in the club.” It appeared that he had caught their attention. Warner continued. “I work for American Foam. . . . I know that people purchase foam for sound deadening. There’s different qualities of foam you can use.” The brothers asked Warner if he could bring them some samples; then, sensing that they had stumbled upon a relatively easy solution to a difficult problem, they took their leave.

Back at the club, Mike Derderian spoke with manager Tim Arnold about the Warner meeting. “Well, I’m going to buy some soundproofing from this guy because it’ll kill two birds with one stone. He’ll be happy we bought it from him to stop the noise and probably put some money in his pocket,” Derderian explained.

Later that week, Patricia Byrnes, an entertainment booking agent, stood with Jeff Derderian and Paul Vanner before the stage at The Station while her band client “loaded in.” She noticed several colored twelve-by-twelve-inch squares of foam laid out on the stage floor and a man explaining the differences between each. Byrnes pointed to one of the samples and kidded Derderian, “You can’t put peach foam up in a rock club. That’s a decorating faux pas.” They all laughed. There was no discussion of fire-retardant foam being an option.

After the foam salesman left, Byrnes told Derderian that she used special fireproof carpet for sound insulation in her home studio, and offered to show him a piece of it that she had in her van. Derderian demurred, saying, “No,
no. I’ve got to get it from this, you know, this guy because the neighbors are complaining.”

Warner thereafter created an American Foam quotation sheet for “25 blocks” (fifty three-foot by seven-foot sheets) of polyurethane “sound foam” to be sold to The Station. Price: $580. He would later admit that this was “the cheap stuff — the ‘Ford Taurus’ of foam.” According to Warner’s secretary at American Foam, Desiree Labrie, it was not a common practice by anyone at the company to advise a buyer of a fire-or flame-retardant option.

Around the same time, Todd Bryant of B&G Gutters Inc. was asked by Michael Derderian to prepare a quote for installing sound insulation at The Station. Bryant had previously done work for both Derderian brothers at their homes, so he agreed to meet Jeff at the club to scope out the work. On May 18, 2000, he provided a written quote to “Mike Derian [
sic
], 211 Cowesett Avenue, West Warwick, R.I.” for the installation of fire-retardant blown-in cellulose insulation in the main ceiling and roof slopes of the club, along with fiberglass insulation in a knee wall. Bryant’s price was $1,980. He never heard from the Derderians again.

On June 9, 2000, Mike Derderian wrote to Barry Warner at American Foam: “Please accept our order for 25 blocks of sound foam.”

Three weeks later, a truck bearing the markings of American Foam Corporation pulled up outside The Station. As its driver loaded over one thousand square feet of corrugated foam sheets into The Station, he might have wondered why a rock club needed so much cheap packing foam.

Over the following week, club manager Tim Arnold glued sheets of the charcoal gray, corrugated “egg-crate” polyurethane foam over the walls and ceiling of the entire west end of The Station using 3
M
Super 77 spray adhesive. He covered the south wall, too, above the wainscoting, all the way to the corridor leading to the men’s and ladies’ rooms. Arnold lined the sloped ceiling over the dance floor on the south roof pitch with the gray material, as well as the unusual double-thickness door that served as the band’s load-in door on the end nearest Warner’s house. He even glued the gray polyurethane foam directly on top of the stiff, seventeen-inch-square blocks of two-inch-thick white foam (later spray-painted black) that Howard Julian had screwed onto the three walls of the drummer’s alcove back in 1996. Surely this would deaden the sound and silence Warner’s complaints.

Neither Jeff nor Mike Derderian quit his day job to run The Station. Jeff continued reporting for
WHDH
in Boston. Less than a year after he and his brother lined the club’s walls with polyurethane foam, he appeared on-camera in a story on the fire hazards of foam mattresses. Shot in the apartment of
one of the
TV
station’s producers, the story was one of several Jeff recorded that day.

Jeff Derderian was known at
WHDH
as “talent” who could arrive on-site, glance at his producer-written story line, and do a stand-up with minimal preparation. He would ad lib and “punch his words for dramatic emphasis,” according to producer Michael Boudo. On the afternoon of the mattress fire shoot, he was definitely on his game, hitting his marks in a single take. “Another problem is what’s inside the mattress: polyurethane foam,” Derderian gravely intoned. “Fire safety experts call it ‘solid gasoline.’ It can cause a smoldering mattress to burst into flames.” Then, he unclipped his microphone and left for his 4 p.m. assignment.

CHAPTER 4

ONLY ROCK ’N’ ROLL

FOR MOST, THE TERM “HARDSCRABBLE LIFE”
conjures up images of dustbowl Oklahoma, or Appalachia. People tend not to think of America’s smallest state, with its hundred-plus miles of lush coastline, as Steinbeck country, where life is hard, and fun times, few.

But Rhode Island of the twenty-first century is not the Gilded Age mansions of Newport. Neither is it those Industrial Age monuments to middle-class prosperity, the textile mills. Instead, Little Rhody is a state that, for many, is a land of modest educational and employment opportunities. For a goodly number of its inhabitants, life in the Ocean State means hard work and conservative aspirations.

Home for many Rhode Island thirty-somethings is an unassuming rental, or even a bedroom in the parents’ house. Work, if they can find it, tends to be of the kind that rewards longevity or political connections, rather than cutting-edge skills. Rhode Island’s total population has not changed materially over the last forty years, hovering right around one million. Most who are born here stay here, and rarely venture far from home.

Even fun, when the opportunity presents itself, is for the most part on a modest scale. Rhode Islanders don’t weekend in the Hamptons or jet to Aspen for the holidays. A summer day at Scarborough Beach, where oiled sunbathers bask in sea-lion proximity and serious neck jewelry is de rigueur (for guys
and
girls), might be the recreational high point of the year. And, in the depth of winter, it can get even bleaker. Cabin fever sets in around January, and by February, a night out in a rock club, where sound levels dull pain and body heat raises the temperature to summertime, can look pretty attractive.

Erin Pucino worked the 6 a.m. shift at the self-serve Shell station in Warwick that the Derderian brothers had purchased two months before they bought the Station nightclub. She had worked for the gas station’s previous owner, but shortly after the Derderians bought it, the brothers set her straight about finances. “Things are going to be different now,” instructed Michael Derderian.
“From here on, instead of your regular paycheck, you’re going to get half your salary in a paycheck and the rest in cash.” “And, by the way, turn the outside lights off as soon as the sun comes up. And keep that damned electric heater low. It’s too expensive to run.”

Pucino, shivering in her drafty cashier’s shack, thought, “You cheap bastards.”

Erin was the single mother of a six-year-old boy, and she worked two jobs. With her red-streaked black hair, multiple facial piercings, and tattoos, Erin looked every bit the heavy-metal rock fan, but economic realities prevented her from actually following the bands she liked.

Working for the Derderians at their newly acquired gas station was a switch from working under its prior owner, Danny Saad, and Pucino found it to be a change for the worse. Saad had paid her by check with full contributions to such niceties as workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and Social Security. The Derderian brothers’ inveterate cheapness and penchant for under-the-table payroll were hardly outweighed by the occasional discount coupon she’d receive to see some national act play at The Station. But that was the deal. Work for peanuts, and sometimes she’d get comped into their club for a show.

Pucino put up with it for a couple of years, then finally had enough. She gave her notice in late January 2003, a few weeks before Great White was scheduled to play at The Station. But when another clerk was absent on that concert night, Erin reluctantly agreed to cover for him at the gas station — on the condition that she could leave in time to hear Great White’s first song. Pressed for help that night, the Derderians agreed. At the time, Pucino thought she’d struck a pretty good deal. Her escape from life’s tedium would be purchased with a few more hours of work tedium — for many Rhode Islanders, the coin of the realm.

Mike Iannone was not what could be called a regular at The Station. But he was a good friend of Steve Mancini, Keith Mancini, and Tom Conte — whose band, Fathead, regularly played there. Iannone hung out with his Fathead buddies and even helped them load their equipment into the club on occasion. He shared their excitement at opening for Great White, and planned to be there cheering them on.

Mike knew where he was going in life, and it was far beyond any dingy rock club. By 2003 Iannone was a senior education major at Rhode Island College. In just a few more months, he’d have his bachelor’s degree and a
teaching certificate for high school mathematics. He had purpose, drive, and a sense of what felt right in a given situation — and what didn’t.