3 Indicted in R.I. Club Blaze

The two brothers who owned a Rhode Island nightclub where 100 people died in a February fire and the manager of the band whose pyrotechnics set it off were indicted Tuesday on 200 counts each of involuntary manslaughter.

Club owners Jeffrey and Michael Derderian and Dan Biechele, tour manager of the band Great White, each pleaded not guilty at an arraignment in Warwick, R.I., not far from the site of the nation’s fourth-deadliest nightclub fire. The men were charged with two counts for each death in the Feb. 20 fire. Under Rhode Island law, each count carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

Atty. Gen. Patrick C. Lynch said the Derderians and Biechele had been charged with two types of manslaughter. The first was described as “gross negligence.” The second involved committing a misdemeanor, such as a fire code violation that resulted in death.

The charges against the Derderians stemmed from allegedly faulty maintenance at the club, including the installation of flammable soundproofing foam that allowed the fire to spread.

Biechele was charged because he lighted the band’s fireworks.

Although more than 200 people were injured in the blaze, Rhode Island law has no provision for criminal negligence that produces serious bodily injury, Lynch said.

The indictments -- the first criminal charges to be brought in connection with the fire -- followed a nine-month grand jury investigation of the inferno that leveled the Station nightclub in less than four minutes. The horrific blaze in the blue-collar community of West Warwick, 10 miles south of Providence, sent pangs of grief throughout the small state.

Survivors and relatives of fire victims who met Tuesday with Lynch greeted the indictments with mixed emotions. “We figured this was coming,” said John Hussey, whose wife, Laurie, was badly burned as she fled the blaze. “They’ve got to play their cards. They’ve got to blame somebody -- but in my opinion, they should have charged the officials who checked that building and said it was safe.”

More than 400 heavy metal fans were packed into the one-story wooden nightclub when Great White opened its act with a dramatic pyrotechnic display. The flames almost instantly leapt to foam insulation and an acoustic curtain behind the band and soon spread to the club’s ceiling and walls.

Many who escaped said they thought at first that the roaring fire was part of the band’s trademark fireworks presentation. Smoke and fire so quickly consumed the small club that many revelers could not find their way to an exit.

All but one member of Great White managed to escape unharmed. Guitarist Ty Longley perished in the fire.

“Obviously, the members of the band are relieved,” Los Angeles attorney Ed McPherson said Tuesday after learning that his clients had not been indicted in the disaster. “They are saddened about Dan Biechele getting indicted. That is awfully unfortunate. But they are relieved -- although this is not the kind of thing that you go celebrate.”

Biechele’s Rhode Island attorney, Thomas Briody, praised the 27-year-old tour manager as a “courageous young man” who returned to Rhode Island to await the grand jury’s report, “knowing that an indictment was possible.”

However, Briody said, Biechele “could not have known of the dangerous conditions that existed inside the Station -- the limits on the crowd, the flammable and toxic foam on the walls. He relied on the word of people who told him Great White could perform, and perform with the use of pyrotechnic devices.”

The band has maintained that it sought and obtained permission to set off the fireworks. The Derderians have said they did not know Great White intended to use pyrotechnics.

Jeffrey Pine, a lawyer for Jeffrey Derderian, said Tuesday at a news conference that the Derderian brothers “should not be facing criminal charges.”

“They are not criminals,” said Pine, a former Rhode Island attorney general. “They did not commit a criminal act.”

In addition to co-owning the nightclub, Jeffrey Derderian, 37, was a popular television reporter in his home state. Derderian, who was present at the Station the night of the fire, resigned from his TV job soon afterward. Michael Derderian is 42.

Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Netti C. Vogel set bail for the Derderian brothers at $5,000 each. Biechele’s bail was set at $10,000.

The indictments followed a massive investigation in which hundreds of witnesses were interviewed and charred remnants of the nightclub were painstakingly examined. Authorities studied club records and appointment books from Great White, a band whose heyday passed with the 1980s. Receipts from a foam manufacturer also were entered into evidence, along with samples of wiring and paint from the nightclub’s ruins.

Fire inspectors’ records also were carefully studied. In repeated inspections, the club had never been charged with safety violations. The Station had passed an inspection as recently as two months before the fire. No mention of the club’s foam insulation appeared in the reports of any inspector.

Fire survivor Walter Castle Jr., 30, said Tuesday that the indictments of the Derderians and Biechele were appropriate.

“But the West Warwick fire inspector and the state fire marshal should have been indicted too,” Castle said. “Everybody should have been indicted. Come on, they took all my friends away from me. The attorney general did not do right by us.”

Hussey said his wife is back at work, serving coffee at a doughnut shop. Hussey said he did not blame the Derderians for what happened. “Every business runs the same. You cut corners here, you cut corners there,” he said. “They didn’t do anything different from any other owners of any other club.”

But Hussey said the consensus among fire survivors was that the indictments did not go far enough.

“I think we all want the officials [charged]. Everybody and their brother’s saying the same thing: We want to know what’s going on with those officials. They were the ones who were responsible for not shutting down the club,” Hussey said.

Soon after the fire, Rhode Island legislators instituted tough new fire-safety standards, including regulations requiring sprinklers in older buildings. The Station had been exempt from such rules because it was built when fire laws were more lax.

Scores of civil lawsuits are expected to be filed in connection with the fire.