Identifying Nightclub Fire Victims Will Take Time

As grieving families girded for the bad news, a somber Gov. Donald L. Carcieri on Saturday began releasing names of some of the victims of Rhode Island’s deadly nightclub fire. And federal investigators began converging on the scene to determine who was to blame for the inferno that killed 96 concert-goers in minutes.

Carcieri said 81 victims from the blaze that consumed The Station music club in West Warwick late Thursday night are too badly burned for visual identification. Medical examiners have begun the painstaking process of using dental records to place names on the dead, he said.

“My whole focus is to get these bodies identified,” said the governor. “All these collateral things -- the investigation, charges -- we will do down the road.”

But even as the governor spoke from the National Guard Armory here, a multipronged investigation of the fire that also left 185 injured -- 44 of them critically -- was underway.

Five teams of experts trained in examining victims of explosions and catastrophes, such as the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City, arrived to assist Rhode Island coroners. Representatives of agencies from the U.S. Public Health Service to the National Institute of Standards in Technology to the Department of Health and Human Services assembled here to work with state and local authorities.

What is expected to be a lengthy and intensive effort will focus on whether the rock band Great White was authorized to set off a pyrotechnics display in a small, crowded nightclub, authorities said Saturday. Officials also planned to question club owners Michael and Jeffrey Derderian about why there apparently were more than 350 people packed into an area with a far smaller official capacity.

The nature of the explosives used as part of Great White’s opening act also must be explored, Special Agent James McNally of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said.

The band’s trademark pyrotechnics shot up “like a blowtorch,” said Jesse Botelho, 30, who escaped by throwing himself out a window. Acoustical curtains and insulation caught fire instantly, and within 30 seconds, witnesses said, the room was so darkened by smoke that they could not see their own hands in front of them.

Visiting the site of the fire, ATF agent McNally called it “the worst thing I have ever seen -- just the amount of loss.”

Echoing this sentiment was Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who said: “I was just frankly taken aback because of the number of bodies that were taken out. I saw firefighters going by with their arms filled with body bags. I thought, that’ll be all they need. And then they went back for more.”

State Atty. Gen. Patrick Lynch would not speculate whether criminal charges will be brought. He refused to put a timetable on the investigation. “My obligation is to make sure that the emotional tide doesn’t dictate the result,” he said.

McNally said he saw “nothing to indicate federal charges” at this time, but possible fire and building code violations will be considered, authorities said.

Agents for Great White and the Derderian brothers have traded accusations about who was responsible for Thursday’s lethal fire. Late Saturday, the Derderians convened a press conference to read a statement expressing sympathy for victims.

In addition to co-owning The Station, Jeffrey Derderian is a well-known Rhode Island television reporter. Reading a prepared statement Saturday, he was twice overcome by sobs that forced him to pause.

“This horrific human tragedy has devastated my family and I as it has done to all Rhode Islanders,” Derderian began.

In his family’s first public statement, Derderian -- who refused to take questions from the press -- declared: “It was a total shock to me to see the pyrotechnics going off when Great White took the stage.”

In the same emphatic voice, Derderian continued: “No permission [to use fireworks] was ever requested by the band or any of its agents, and no permission was ever given.”

In Los Angeles, Edwin McPherson, the band’s lawyer on Saturday disputed reports that the band ignited pyrotechnics without club owners’ knowledge. “There absolutely was permission,” he said, adding that one of the club’s owners was present when the fireworks began.

Tour manager Dan Biechelle had “a very specific conversation with Mike Derderian about what special effects the band would use,” McPherson said. No written contract was drawn, he said, noting that the manager had successfully relied on verbal agreements in the past.

Band members flew into Los Angeles on Saturday night and are declining media interviews, he said.

“They’re extremely distraught,” said McPherson. “They’re distraught because 96 people lost their lives. They feel it personally.... They lost one of their own. They’re horrified that something like this happened.”

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Questions of culpability and the morass of liability issues continued to concern some families Saturday as they awaited news on missing loved ones, Carcieri said.

“The families are asking, ‘Why did this happen? Who is responsible? And what can be done?’ ” the governor said, adding, “We are going in every direction to try to get to the bottom of culpability here.”

These issues are understandable, the governor said: “I have the same questions myself, so I have complete sympathy.”

Early Saturday, Carcieri met with some of the families of the 15 victims whose bodies were positively identified by state medical examiners. Although overwhelmingly sad, the families also expressed a sense of relief, the governor said.

“At least they get to take their loved one home and go through the grief process,” he said. “Right now, the other families are in such a terrible limbo.”

All but one of the injured have been accounted for, the governor said, making the wait slow and painful for families who believe their loved ones -- sons and daughters, husbands and wives, grandchildren or just good friends -- perished Thursday at The Station.

But at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, an unidentified female remained the last hope for those still missing a wife, daughter or girlfriend. The hospital’s chief of emergency medicine, Dr. Alasdair Conn, said Saturday that calls were pouring in about the critically injured woman, in her 20s, whose face was burned beyond recognition.

Another woman at the hospital was also severely burned, on life support and too heavily sedated to speak, Conn said in an interview. However, late in the day, she was identified by a distinctive piece of jewelry. Her family rushed from Rhode Island to be at her side, the governor said.

In the lobby of Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, John Van Deusen, 61, said his son John, 40, suffered burns over 35% of his body, but was holding his own. There was no sign of infection, he said, “Thank God.”

Van Deusen said his son’s condition was stable, and “all we can hope is he remains that way.” His son was lying unconscious, Van Deusen said: “Right now he knows nothing. He can’t hear anything. He doesn’t know whether we are there or not. He doesn’t even know what happened.”

And all the senior Van Deusen knew was that his son “went to the concert, and then we got a phone call in the morning that there had been a huge fire. It took us several hours to find out where he was.”

He said several others from around the family’s hometown of Carver, Mass., still were missing. Van Deusen said the young woman who went to the concert with his son was in the same hospital, in the same wing. The Van Deusens thought another friend had gone along too, “but it turned out he didn’t go with them, thank God, so he’s fine.”

Van Deusen, a retired auto mechanic, said his son followed him into the business. “His hands are badly burned,” he said. “They are trying to save his hands.”

Several of those who were missing worked at branches of a large grocery store chain in Rhode Island and the rest of New England, said Kelly O’Connor, a spokeswoman for Stop & Shop markets. She said store officials learned that a group of employees who went to Thursday’s concert at The Station did not show up for work Friday.

“We were hit especially hard,” said O’Connor, who declined to say how many employees were unaccounted for.

To help families process their sadness, Carcieri announced Saturday that shuttle buses would run from the crisis center set up at a hotel in West Warwick to the site where The Station once stood. The building has been completely destroyed, and while hesitating to say for sure that no additional bodies would be found, Carcieri said he was hopeful that the search had been completed.

The visit will be private, the governor stressed, with roads closed off and the press far away.

“The families have expressed a desire to be at the site,” he said. “They want to go there, they want to leave some memento.”

In a driving rain Saturday, many residents of this small state already had stopped by the site where the rock club stood. There were flowers and teddy bears, photographs and handwritten notes rendered unreadable in the rain. Leaving a bouquet, one neighbor said she was sure there would be more if only the rain would stop.

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Times staff writer Kristina Sauerwein in Los Angeles contributed to this report.