Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (51 page)

One of the first questions to arise after the fire was whether The Station’s owners gave Great White permission to use pyrotechnics. (The question itself is potentially misleading, because a literally true negative answer does not end the relevant inquiry.) The key evidence bearing on this issue is that the band’s tour manager, Dan Biechele, immediately explained to investigators how he and Mike Derderian had discussed pyro in a phone conversation to “advance” the Station gig. Biechele’s day sheet for the venue, seized from his computer right after the fire, read, “Pyro: Yes,” consistent with permission having been given in that phone call. At other venues on Great White’s tour, where permission was denied, pyro wasn’t used.

More important, the overwhelming weight of the evidence is that the Derderians and their employees had long permitted pyro to be used by
other
bands at The Station. In fact, Dan Biechele had personally shot pyro there with W.A.S.P. just two years earlier. Even if permission for Great White to use pyro on the night of the fire was not explicit, then it was at least implicit from past practice at the club. That the club’s owners historically tolerated and even encouraged pyrotechnics at The Station cannot be refuted. It appears on several videotapes. Perhaps most surprising is that a pyrotechnic-sparked fire did not happen there years earlier.

Another central question in the tragedy was whether Denis Larocque had a good-faith basis in the state fire code for increasing the club’s capacity to over four hundred at the request of Michael Derderian. Its answer can probably be found in Larocque’s designating the entire building as “standing
room” when state law explicitly limits that designation to “only that part of a building directly accessible to doors for hasty exit.” In my opinion, the fire marshal’s unprecedented use of the standing-room designation for the
entire building
could not possibly have been undertaken “in good faith,” as I understand the term.

The same may be said for Larocque’s failure to “notice” nine hundred square feet of flammable egg-crate polyurethane foam covering the west end of the club, including the very door that he cited on multiple occasions for opening inward. Larocque would have had to reach
through a hole in the foam
in order to open that door. By my interpretation of the phrase “good-faith effort,” his repeatedly overlooking the foam cannot possibly measure up.

But why did Larocque cite other, less significant, code violations, while he let the “solid gasoline” on the walls slide? I would suggest that he might have done so because the other violations were all correctable without shutting down the club’s core business: loud music. The Derderians probably saw that foam, which had been purchased through next-door homeowner Barry Warner, as their key to neighborhood peace (and, thus, the club’s continued operation). The foam simply had to stay — at any cost. (An even simpler explanation would be that Larocque’s citing relatively minor violations, while he let the deadly foam pass, made it look like he was doing his job in at least some respect.) We’ll never know all the reasons Larocque ignored the foam. His grand jury testimony is certainly of no help.

Another question posed after the tragedy was, “Why did so few people make use of the band door exit?” Two pieces of evidence shaped my belief in this regard. First, several witnesses credibly recount how, during the critical first minute of their ninety-second escape window, one or more club bouncers turned them away from that door, insisting that it was “for the band only.” Second, and equally important, was the natural disinclination of club patrons to head toward the flames on the club’s west wall, which quickly spread over and around the band door. This in itself may provide an explanation for Jeff Rader’s mysterious photo, in which he appears frozen in the face of an impossible choice: join the immovable crowd facing the club’s front doors, or turn toward the flames behind him.

When I oversaw testing of the polyurethane and polyethylene foams at the Western Fire Center in 2008, my instinct to escape from the source of radiant heat was overwhelming. Within the first minute of each burn of a foam-covered room corner, I was literally driven back several feet from the area of the hood calorimeter by the heat flux. I tried to imagine myself on the dance floor or in the atrium area of the club on the night of the fire, and
whether I would have been able, first, to appreciate that escape from the club’s front doors was impossible (very difficult to perceive from that location), and, second, to head
toward
the source of the intense radiant heat to exit through the band door. In retrospect, it is small surprise that so few patrons were able to do so.

A final important question from the fire is a more general one. In studying the Butler videotape, I was struck by the fact that some people responded bravely to the unfolding crisis, while others seemingly froze. Why? The assumption is that behavior in such a situation is a matter of simple choice. But might it just reflect ingrained character traits?

According to Julie Mellini, Jeff Derderian’s instinct, when she handed him her back-bar cash box in front of the building, was to disappear for a minute; this, while screaming patrons were breaking windows to escape from the front of the club. (A cash box was later found stashed in a snowbank behind the club.) Similarly, Brian Butler continuously shot video for six and a half minutes before putting his camera down to breathlessly phone his
TV
station that he “had gotten it all on tape.” By contrast, people like plumber Shamus Horan reached through broken windows to drag victim after victim from the inferno. It may just be that some people are born to selfless heroics, or simply conditioned, by example or even military service, to respond decisively in emergency situations.

Five years after the fire, Shamus Horan, who is seen on the Butler tape pulling six or seven victims to safety through broken windows, was taking a morning drive near his home in Coventry, Rhode Island, with his little girl in the car, when he saw tire marks that left the pavement and headed off into the woods. “Another drunk last night,” mused Horan. But as he slowed for the turn himself, he heard a small voice crying, “Help us! Help us!” Then he spotted a car, off the road, overturned and partially submerged in a rain-swollen brook. He pulled over and told his daughter that he’d be right back.

Wading into the cold water, Horan could see the lower half of a woman’s body, belted into the driver’s seat, with head and chest submerged. The cries were coming from a toddler, strapped into a rear child seat, who had managed to twist so that her head was just above the water’s surface.

Struggling with her three-point harness, Shamus was able to free the driver and drag her blue, lifeless body to the riverbank. He then returned to the car, where he unbuckled the crying girl from her car seat and handed her, uninjured, to a woman who had stopped at the scene. Horan waded back
to the car, groping about in the wet blackness to make sure no one else was trapped.

Satisfied that no other victims remained in the vehicle, the exhausted rescuer trudged back to shore and gazed down at the woman lying motionless at his feet. Horan had been raised on a farm. He’d cared for birthing calves and dying animals. He thought he knew life and death when he saw them. But the woman who had helped him with the toddler said, “I think she’s alive!”

At that instant, the thought that he was standing by, and not helping someone who just might have a chance, appalled Horan. He began frenzied
CPR
. Clear an airway. Chest compressions. Mouth-to-mouth. Miraculously, the blue form stirred, coughed, spit up water . . . and began breathing. Two days later, Horan accepted the woman’s personal thanks from her hospital bed. She recovered completely.

Years have passed, and Shamus Horan occasionally sees the woman from the accident, walking past his house with her granddaughter. All three smile and wave. It means much more to the humble pipefitter than the engraved hero’s plaque that was presented to him by the Town of Coventry.

None of us knows how we might react to imminent peril to ourselves or others. We’d like to think that we would act swiftly, appropriately, and decisively. However, it’s probably not even a matter of choice, but one of nature. We can only hope that if that terrible day comes, our nature will help us rise to the challenge.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE
without the meticulous research of Jenna Wims Hashway, who examined thousands of documents in order to locate all the important stuff. Her editing of chapter drafts was, thankfully, both helpful and humane.

Sincere praise is also due the many newspaper reporters who covered the Station nightclub fire. From the moment their police radio scanners first crackled with the news, up to and through its legal aftermath,
Providence Journal
reporters, photographers, and editors upheld a proud tradition, earning Pulitzer Prize finalist honors for the
Journal
’s outstanding coverage of the tragedy. The
Boston Globe
and
New York Times
also provided valuable secondary source material.
Killer Show
simply could not have been written years after the event without those journalists’ outstanding work under fire and on deadline.

Several people generously educated me in their areas of expertise as the project took shape. All accurate information on those subjects is theirs; any mistakes, mine. On the subject of crowd behavior in fires, the late Professor Guylene Proulx provided valuable insights; on forensic archaeology, Dr. Richard Gould; on fire science, the late Robert Brady Williamson; and on criminal procedure, attorney Robert Mann.

Many thanks to Jeff Drake of Drake Exhibits for his rendering of the Station floor plan used in the book. His accurate diagrams of the club’s construction were invaluable during the civil litigation. William White Legal Photography provided critically important images in support of the cases. Also, Tim Kenny of Power Showz Inc. furnished incomparable audio-visual support for several of the mediations.

My sincerest thanks and admiration go to Professor Francis McGovern of Duke University School of Law, whose selfless work enabled fair allocation of settlement proceeds among the Station fire victims. His unfailing professionalism and empathy remain an inspiration to me.

Successful prosecution of the civil cases arising from the fire could not have been accomplished by any single attorney or firm. It was a team effort of the
Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee. Attorneys who worked on that committee, in alphabetical order, were John Barylick, Stephen Breggia, Patrick Jones, Eva Mancuso, Mark Mandell, Steven Minicucci, Charles Redihan, Michael St. Pierre, Peter Schneider, and Max Wistow. Additionally, mediator Paul Finn helped facilitate settlements with several major defendants.

Thanks so much to Aaron Priest and Lucy Childs Baker of the Aaron Priest Literary Agency, who were strongly supportive of this project from the outset. Stephen Hull, acquisitions editor at the University Press of New England, was instrumental in making a welcoming home for this book at UPNE. Thank you, Steve, and editor-in-chief Phyllis Deutsch, for this privilege.

To my early readers, Sally Barylick, Raphael Boguslav, Mary Ann Kesson, John and Ginny Bunnell, Holly and Steven Massey, and Bill Griffith—thanks for your wonderful encouragement and suggestions. To Jean Skeffington and Laura Jensen, who insisted early on that “these stories must be told,” thank you for lighting a proverbial fire under me.

To Wilbur, my yellow Lab, who understands that on late writing nights, bedtime only really begins after the four-tone Windows “shutdown sound,” thanks for warming the floor at my feet those three years. Good boy!

And to Marie, Chris, and Anne, who have far more patience with me than one may fairly ask of a family, thank you for reading each chapter hot off the press and gently steering me right.

Finally, I would ask a moment of silence for all victims of the Station nightclub fire and their families. This is their story, not mine. In a book this length, only some of their experiences can be described, and those, admittedly, imperfectly. The few victims whose stories appear in the book are representatives of a much larger class, whose members’ cumulative suffering cannot be adequately portrayed in any book or books. For those families, the book will never be closed.