Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (50 page)

It’s often said that disasters of the scope of the Station fire do not occur because just one thing is done wrong; rather, they are usually the result of many mistakes. That was certainly true here. The fire was a result of multiple tragic acts,
the absence of any one of which would have avoided the tragedy
. My list of causative blunders is a long one, and can, no doubt, be supplemented:

illegal use of pyrotechnics, unsuited to the venue, by unlicensed personnel

improper use of foam plastic insulation as sound insulation on interior walls

overcrowding of the club allowed by owners

absence of safety devices such as automatic sprinklers

lack of training for club employees

issuance of inflated maximum building occupancies by fire inspector

nonenforcement of fire codes by inspectors

design of entranceway with pinch point inhibiting rapid egress

manufacturers’ failure to warn of their products’ foreseeable misuse

promoters’ failure to observe hazards presented by the Great White tour in previous appearances

Every one of the above failures was motivated, at least in part, by greed. Whether the selling of cheap pyrotechnic spectacle by Great White, or the wringing of every last buck from a run-down bar by the Derderians, it all came down to money. And, when each player made his unconscious calculation to sacrifice others’ safety for profit or convenience, tragedy ensued, necessitating the yet more ghoulish arithmetic of the civil justice system.

I was struck, though, and strangely encouraged by a corollary of the above calculus. That is, that
just one person or corporation doing the right thing can make all the difference
in a given situation. At The Station, it could have been Fire Marshal Larocque citing the flammable foam on the club’s walls, or Great White forgoing illegal pyro. More generally, one club owner’s installing sprinklers instead of a larger sound system; one manufacturer’s clearly warning of its product’s dangerous properties, instead of hiding behind dubious test results — just one person acting reasonably, rather than greedily, can often avoid catastrophe.

Events after the fire, however, were disheartening, demonstrating that we can be woefully slow learners in these matters. Less than two years after the Station fire, the Cromagnon Republic nightclub in Argentina went up in flames when pyrotechnics ignited furnishings, killing 175 young people. Then, in January 2009, sixty-one New Year’s revelers lost their lives in a Bangkok nightclub after fireworks ignited its ceiling. Most were crushed near the club’s front doors. In December of that same year, a fire in a Russian nightclub, also ignited by pyrotechnics, killed 109 people. Overcrowding, poor exits, and indoor fireworks all played roles in these tragedies; yet no one bothered to learn from mistakes of the past.

It was even more discouraging to learn that corporations appear to have short institutional memories. A current Google search of “soundproofing foam” yields several websites that still brag of their plastic foam’s “testing Class
A-1
,
non-flammable
, under
ASTM
E84,” the notorious Steiner tunnel test, which was the subject of the 1974
FTC
consent agreement with the Society of Foam Plastics Industries. That agreement stressed that the Steiner tunnel test does not accurately predict the flammability or flame spread of foam plastics “in actual fire conditions.” Under the agreement, the plastic foam manufacturers agreed not to use terms like “non-burning” or “self-extinguishing,” based on the test. So, why are sellers in 2010 still calling their
foam products “non-flammable” under that discredited test? I would guess that if you asked their management about the 1974 consent agreement, they’d have not the slightest idea what you were talking about.

When it comes to protecting the public from dangerous products, the answer cannot lie exclusively in government regulation. Rather, the civil justice system must provide a necessary backstop and sharp reminder that manufacturers will be held accountable when defectively labeled or misleadingly sold products cause tragic events.

I hope that the evidence marshaled in this book will help readers form their own answers to questions left open when the criminal and civil cases settled. However, as I’ve discussed the case with friends over the years, they often ask, “Well, what do
you
think really happened?” To the extent that any reader cares about my answer, I would offer the following purely personal opinions. In so doing, I’ll summarize the evidence on which I rely. Again, they’re only my personal opinions, and other persons — especially the participants themselves — may strenuously disagree.