Nightclub Fire Toll Nears 100

WEST WARWICK, R.I. — The raging nightclub fire touched off by a rock group’s pyrotechnic show claimed 96 lives by late Friday, as officials struggled to identify badly burned victims and investigate the chaos that sent scores of survivors tumbling from a mobbed doorway.

Hours after 187 fire and smoke victims were rushed to hospitals in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, nearly two dozen remained in critical condition with life-threatening burns from one of the worst nightclub blazes in U.S. history.

Splashes of flame and rolling coils of dark smoke coursed through The Station, a small, low-ceilinged club, Thursday night in this Providence suburb.

Desperate concert-goers trampled one another in a mad rush through the club’s main entrance, some writhing with their clothes aflame as they staggered into the street.

Witnesses described fire racing up the walls of the club with an ominous crackle at 11 p.m., moments after the Los Angeles-based heavy metal rock band Great White took the stage in front of the sparking wheels of a pyrotechnic display.

“The whole building filled with smoke in 20 to 30 seconds,” said Christopher Travis, a survivor. “Everyone started panicking. It was total chaos.”

Rhode Island Gov. Donald L. Carcieri said the fireworks apparently were used without permission from either state or city public safety officials. As the club’s owners and Great White’s management blamed each other for failing to obtain proper licenses, police and prosecutors found themselves confronting hazy questions of accountability similar to those raised this week in Chicago after a nightclub stampede led to the deaths of 21 people.

“This is just unspeakable and it should not have happened,” Carcieri said. Added West Warwick Fire Chief Charlie Hall: “There may be a bone of contention among them, but all I know is nobody got a license.”

The rock group’s lead singer, Jack Russell, told reporters that the club’s managers had given Great White permission to mount the fireworks display. The club’s owners, Michael and Jeffrey Dederian, countered in a written statement that they had no “prior knowledge that pyrotechnics were going to be used by the band.”

As 120 firefighters battled the blaze, rescue teams from West Warwick and the neighboring town of Warwick dashed in and out of the club, carrying scores of burned and smoke-choked survivors out until a wall of flame finally drove them back. Pressing into the fleeing crowds, firefighters hauling heavy rubber hoses trained streams of pressurized water on the flames long enough to bring out 100 burned survivors from a narrow hall that led to the mobbed front exit, Hall said.

But within three minutes, officials said, the club’s main room had convulsed into a pyre. In half an hour, bolts of flames cast eerie light on the skeletal remains of the club’s exterior walls. “The whole place was gone,” said Jack Chartier, fire chief from neighboring Warwick.

Only when smoldering hotspots were finally extinguished late Friday were fire teams able to search The Station’s charred ruins to determine how many victims they had missed. Firefighters found bodies clustered near the stage and in bathrooms.

More than 25 lay near the entrance, Fire Chief Hall said, just beyond the reach of rescuers who had waited in vain just yards away.

Dozens of injured club-goers -- burned, retching, their hands and faces seared by flame, bloodied by broken glass and blackened by smoke -- were transported by ambulance to local hospitals. At least 25 people sustained life-threatening injuries, including 10 with severe burns airlifted to burn centers in Boston. Fifteen others with critical injuries were among 71 people admitted to several Rhode Island hospitals.

“I’m not sure New England has seen anything like this since the Cocoanut Grove fire,” said Dr. Joseph Amaral, president of Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, which admitted 43 burn and smoke victims.

Amaral was referring to the worst nightclub fire in U.S. history, which killed 491 people in Boston in November 1942. The West Warwick blaze is the fourth-worst such blaze, after a 1940 fire that killed 198 at a Natchez, Miss., club, and the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Southgate, Ky., where 165 perished in May 1977.

“As much as anyone can prepare for anything like this, the stark reality is hard to imagine,” Amaral said. He said the next three days will be the most critical for those severely burned, but added that painful, difficult skin grafts lay ahead for survivors. Although officials were heartened that all of the injured taken from the club were still alive Friday night, Carcieri warned that the death toll could climb past 100.

Doctors were also surprised, Amaral said, by the “degree of inhalation injuries” suffered by survivors who had little time to react.

“They tried to go out the same way they came in,” Hall said. “That was the problem. They didn’t use the other three fire exits.”

Those exits were unlocked, officials said, but many patrons, including some from out of town, were unfamiliar with the club’s layout.

Some relatives told Carcieri and other officials of receiving frantic calls from victims who fled into the club’s bathrooms only to find there was no way out. “They didn’t have a prayer,” the governor said.

Rhode Island, the nation’s tiniest state, is a compressed warren of ethnic villages, and West Warwick is the state in miniature, an enclave of Portuguese and Irish blue-collar families. As sad-eyed survivors returned to the roped-off club Friday to reclaim cars they had left behind, they found themselves mingling with strangers who also stood and stared, wondering if their own friends and relatives were as lucky.

“I wanted to see it again,” said Erin Pucino, 25, a sales associate with a chin stud and long black hair. “My friends were in there. All these other people were in there. And most of them didn’t get out.”

Many bodies were burned so badly, officials said, that by day’s end they were still having trouble identifying scores of the dead. The first, Carcieri said mutedly, “were those who had identification in their pockets.” Volunteer pathologists were being called in to speed up the identification process.

Among the missing, officials and witnesses said, were Great White’s guitarist, Ty Longley, and Mike “Dr. Metal” Goncalves, a local disc jockey who had introduced the band moments before the fire started.

A video filmed inside the club by a television news crew just as the fire started showed Russell, wearing a blue-starred bandana, leaping onstage. Fans hoisted beer bottles and waved fingers in a heavy metal salute as the fireworks display began. Suddenly, rivulets of flame began snaking up the wall behind the singer.

Witnesses said the band was still playing its first song, “Desert Moon,” as the stage caught fire. “This is the time to stay out all night,” Russell wailed. “I’ve got a fire like a heavenly light ... “

“It went up like a Christmas tree,” Russell said after escaping the flames. “I was trying to put it out with a bottle of water. I turned around and the building was engulfed. My sound man is injured

Sparks from the pyrotechnics appeared to catch on a curtain behind the stage and quickly spread along an egg-crate mat of acoustic material lined against the wall, several witnesses said.

Mistakenly assuming the fire was part of the band’s act, some in the audience kept cheering even as the flames licked upward -- until a sudden blast of heat stunned those near the stage with the realization that they were in danger.

“Everyone just stood there,” said Jackie Bernard, 40, a hotel housekeeper from Cranston, R.I., who went to the club with a friend, Tina Ayers. “They thought it was part of the fireworks.”

Bernard noticed “crackling” noises and looked up to see the ceiling cracking and flames sifting nearby. She grabbed Ayers and the two women tried to get to the front entrance, only to find themselves hemmed in by other panic-stricken fans, all groping their way in the dark. The fire quickly shorted out the club’s lights and dense smoke obscured the faint illumination from battery-powered exit signs.

In the dark, gasping, Bernard was separated from Ayers. “I had to let her go,” she said. “I don’t know what happened.” On Friday, her eyes still red-rimmed from the smoke, Bernard returned to gawk sadly at the club’s ruins. Ayers was missing.

Bernard and other witnesses said they had no idea that the fireworks display had gone on without permission. But Great White was one of a number of metal groups that have used incendiaries to punctuate their concerts.

On Web sites, metal fans routinely rave about “pyro” demonstrations by their favorite bands. Late Friday, Domenic Santana, the owner of the Stone Pony, a club in Asbury Park, N.J., said that Great White had set off the incendiaries without warning during a Feb. 14 show. “Our stage manager didn’t even know it until it was done,” Santana said. “My sound man freaked out because of the heat and everything, and they jeopardized the health and safety of our patrons.”

The band also allegedly used fireworks without permission during a Feb. 7 show in Pinellas Park, Fla., said Tim Bryant, a producer who put on the show at Pinellas Park Expo Center. But the group did not ignite fireworks when it played the Riviera Club in Atlanta on Feb. 10.

“There was no fire show,” said Mike Marshall, a Riviera worker who declined to say whether the band had asked if it could use pyrotechnics.

Paul Woolnough, president of Great White’s management company, told Associated Press that tour manager Dan Biechele “always checks” with club officials before pyrotechnics are used. Biechele could not be located for comment.

Russell, Longley, bassist Dave Filice and drummer Eric Powers make up the latest roster of the band, which formed in Los Angeles in 1981, specializing in the the droning blues-drenched metal music pioneered by Led Zeppelin. The group soldiered on through the 1990s, winning a steady fan base among heavy-metal loyalists and selling hundreds of thousands of discs.

Several Great White members and management were questioned “several times” Friday by State Police investigators, said Rhode Island Atty. Gen. Patrick Lynch. Police and state fire marshal investigators were trying to establish who was at fault for using the fireworks.

“The permit law was clearly violated,” Lynch said.

Hall, the fire chief, said both the band and the club’s owners were responsible for obtaining a fireworks license from West Warwick and a “certificate of competence” from the state. The certificate would have had to be taken out by the “pyrotechnician” responsible for igniting the fireworks. It was unclear Friday night who set off the incendiaries, officials said.

“They did not get permission from our department,” Hall said.

The fireworks were used without permission, said Kathleen Hagerty, a lawyer representing club owners Michael and Jeffrey Derderian, who are brothers. The statement said Jeffrey Derderian was in the building when the fire started. Jeffrey Derderian is a television news reporter who had worked in Boston until several weeks ago but then returned to a position in Providence.

“No permission was ever requested by the band or its agents to use pyrotechnics at the Station, and no permission was ever given,” Hagerty said.

Another possible violation, Hall and other officials said, centers on the club’s capacity. The club had a legal limit of 300. Carcieri said there were indications that 350 people had crammed into The Station. Hall offered a conflicting account, saying it was “slightly under the limit.”

The club also appeared to have working exit lights and emergency generators, even though many witnesses said they had to grope for the exits in the dark.

But the club had no sprinkler system. Dating to the late 1950s, Hall said, the club was not covered by a 1976 law that ordered other newer and similarly small commercial establishments to install sprinklers.

“It was grandfathered out,” Hall said.

The club was able to avoid installing sprinklers by maintaining its exit lights and fire extinguishers, which were still functioning when fire officials inspected the club last December, Hall said.

But Hall noted grimly that “if they had a sprinkler system, we wouldn’t all be here today.”

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Mehren reported from West Warwick and Braun reported from Washington. Times staff writer Thomas S. Mulligan contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Nation’s worst club fires

Deaths: 401

Date: Nov. 28, 1942

Location: Boston

Club Name: Cocoanut Grove

Cause: Unknown

Circumstances: Club, jammed with more than 1,000 patrons, had inadequate fire exits.

*

Deaths: 198

Date: April, 23, 1940

Location: Natchez, Miss.

Club Name: Rhythm Night Club

Cause: Unknown

Circumstances: Old wooden-frame building with one exit, Spanish moss draped from beams.

*

Deaths: 165

Date: May 8, 1977

Location: Southgate, Ky.

Club Name: Beverly Hills Supper Club

Cause: Outdated wiring

Circumstances: Club exceeded legal capacity; aisles, exits obstructed by chairs, tables.

*

Deaths: 87

Date: March 25, 1990

Location: The Bronx, N.Y.

Club Name: Happy Land Social Club

Cause: Arson

Circumstances: One exit and no sprinkler system.

*

Deaths: 32

Date: June 24, 1973

Location: New Orleans

Club Name: Upstairs Lounge

Cause: Arson

Circumstances: Fire started near first-floor entrance, raced upstairs into club.

*

Deaths: 25

Date: Oct. 4, 1976

Location: The Bronx, N.Y.

Club Name: Puerto Rican Social Club

Cause: Arson

Circumstances: One exit to second-floor club; fire escape blocked.

*

Deaths: 24

Date: June 30, 1974

Location: Port Chester, N.Y.

Club Name: Gulliver’s Discotheque

Cause: Arson

Circumstances: Arson fire in nearby bowling alley spread to crowded disco.

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Sources: Associated Press, Times files - Researched by JOHN JACKSON and CARY SCHNEIDER