-- The Rhode
Island nightclub fire has now claimed at least 95 lives and injured over 180.
The death toll rose as firefighters searched through the charred shell of the
single-storey wood building. The '80s hard rock band had just started playing
when giant pyrotechnic sparklers on stage began shooting up and ignited the
ceiling. The entire club was engulfed in flames within three minutes, Fire
Chief said. He said the club recently passed a fire inspection, but did
not have a licence for fireworks. The building, which was at least 60 years
old, was not required to have a sprinkler system because of its small size.
The fireworks were used without permission from the club, said a lawyer representing club
owners. "No permission was ever requested by the band or its agents to
use pyrotechnics at The Station, and no permission was ever given," she
said. The band's singer said the manager checked with the club before the show
and the use of fireworks was approved. A guitarist with the band was among the
missing.
Rhode Island
Mourners see site of R.I. blaze, probe widens
-- Grieving
relatives of victims of one of the worst US nightclub disasters which killed 96 people
visited the site in Rhode Island on Sunday, as the state's attorney general vowed an
exhaustive inquiry.
Friends and relatives huddled around the blackened
remains of the wood-framed building after asking Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri for a
formal viewing of the scene.
A six-foot (2 metre) wooded cross set against a
black drape was set up where the The Station nightclub's front door had been. A group of
buses brought mourners to the site from a hotel where they had been waiting to receive
final word whether their relatives were among the dead from Thursday's fire.
At the site the mourners were given red roses to
place where the club's front door used to be. Carcieri, seeking to keep news cameras away,
imposed a 5-mile (8 km) no-fly zone over the building's rubble.
A girl, 15, who has not heard from her mother since
she went to the nightclub, slowly walked down the road from the site crying and clutching
a friend.
Pathologists and dentists worked at the state's
medical examiner's offices in Providence about 15 miles (24 km) away to identify remains
of the victims.
As of noon (1700 GMT) on Sunday only 31 of 96
victims had been identified, Carcieri told reporters. He said 80 people were being treated
at burn units in Massachusetts and Rhode Island hospitals, 105 victims were treated and
released.
At Rhode Island Hospital, the state's only level I
trauma center which took in the bulk of those injured in the blaze, 24 patients in their
20s to 40s are in critical condition. Many will undergo surgery for skin grafts in the
next days.
"While the patients are through the first phase
of recovery that does not mean there are no dangers ahead," said Dr. Joseph Amaral,
the head of Rhode Island Hospital.
Dr. William Cioffi, chief surgeon at Rhode Island
Hospital who is a burn specialist, said some patients who were burned over 50 percent of
their body would likely be in the hospital for at least two to three months.
Survivors of the blaze had described people fleeing
the building with their hair and clothes on fire.
Because many patients were in serious condition,
doctors warned the death toll could go higher. Cioffi and his team expect to operate on 4
to 6 patients a day in the next week. The danger of infection can be high after such
operations.
Carcieri said the identification process will be
completed by late Monday. "We are working feverishly in an orderly fashion" to
identify the remaining victims, he said.
The fire was ignited by pyrotechnics set off as the
heavy metal band Great White began their set around 11 p.m. (0400 GMT Friday). Video
footage taken inside the club showed flames licking at foam insulation behind the stage,
which erupted into a fast-moving fire that sent panicked fans stampeding.
In dispute is whether the band requested or obtained
permission for the display. Both parties stuck to their conflicting claims, with co-owner
saying that he was unaware of the band's plans, while the band's singer said
it had permission to ignite the fireworks.
Other band representatives said the display had not
been used at other venues without authorization. Fireworks were not allowed at The
Station, West Warwick fire officials said.
A former employee of the club, said pyrotechnics had
been used in the club in the past. West Warwick and state fire officials, who would have
had to issue permission for such displays, said no permits were granted.
Local and state police detectives and federal agents
gathered evidence to determine responsibility for the blaze, interviewing people and
combing the wreckage for anything that might give investigators new clues.
Carcieri said that criminal investigations were
being run by state Attorney General Patrick Lynch. "The investigative team is working
without rest and will not stop until there is a determination" of any criminal
culpability, he said. He may convene a grand jury as part of his probe, he said.
Investigators were probing whether the club's
capacity limit of 300 was exceeded. Carcieri said it appeared it had been.
Rhode Island
RAY SUAREZ:
And I'm joined from just across the street from the wreckage of the station nightclub in
West Warwick by Chris Rowland of the Boston Globe. He's been on the scene since late last
night.
Chris, how high is the confirmed death toll at this
hour?
CHRIS ROWLAND: The latest figure is 95 people dead.
RAY SUAREZ: Now, that's risen in a horrifying way
since this morning when they were talking about the mid-50s. Where are those added numbers
coming from? Are these people who were injured in the fire, who are succumbing to their
wounds or people that they're finding in the rubble?
CHRIS ROWLAND: It's people they're finding. I think
that their original estimates were low, based on, I think reports from the club owners how
many people were there. Their latest estimates now actually put the total number in the
club at the time of the fire at 350. That's sort of a new wrinkle because that's 50 more
than the allowable occupancy.
RAY SUAREZ: Are there a lot of injuries still in the
hospital?
CHRIS ROWLAND: There are still eighty-one people in
hospitals, ten in Massachusetts, seventy-one in Rhode Island, and twenty-five of the
people who are hospitalized are in critical condition.
RAY SUAREZ: How about missing people? I understand
during the day, a lot of people have been coming to the scene, a lot of people have been
trying to find out from police where family members are. Is there any way to help them
out?
CHRIS ROWLAND: It's been really a sad, sad thing to
see people coming here looking for their loved ones and wondering, you know, about them.
They've gone to hospitals. They have the... the hospitals have lists of everybody who is
in the hospitals. Family members have shown up here without luck and having no luck at the
hospitals, and really in tears.
RAY SUAREZ: Tell us about the scene there. There
have been a lot of pictures on television during the day of a blazing building, but now it
looks like there is almost no building left.
CHRIS ROWLAND: Yeah, when I got here this morning at
2:00, the building was pretty much destroyed. The fire was raging inferno that swept the
building in a matter of three minutes. So today they've slowly taken the remains of the
building apart as they uncovered bodies. They found about 25 bodies near the front door
where people were trying to get out. And they've also found a number of bodies in the
restrooms where people apparently tried to take refuge.
RAY SUAREZ: It's interesting that there exists such
good pictures of the early stages of all of this. It seems that a Rhode Island TV station
was trying to localize the story of the Chicago nightclub tragedy from earlier, and just
happened to be there when all of this started.
CHRIS ROWLAND: Yeah, the fire officials are using
that tape as part of their investigation. It turns out that a local TV reporter here is
part owner of this club, and he was working on... they had access to the club for their
cameras. They were talking about the whole Chicago debate, the club safety in the wake of
the Chicago tragedy. And we ended up with one here, too.
RAY SUAREZ: So I guess investigators have been able
to put together a pretty good chain of events of how this all came about and how so many
people ended up being killed.
CHRIS ROWLAND: Yeah, they can see how quickly the
fire spread, how people had trouble getting out; how the fire started with these
pyrotechnic devices that were on the stage that caught on to some Styrofoam soundproofing
on the back wall. Witnesses described really thick black smoke that was pouring through
the building at a really rapid rate. People were just overcome. I talked to one guy who
smashed a window to get out in desperation when he saw that the exits were blocked. It's
really a horrific scene of people catching on fire and dying of either burns or smoke
inhalation.
RAY SUAREZ: One thing you don't see in those
pictures is water streaming out of the ceiling. How come there were no sprinklers in that
building?
CHRIS ROWLAND: This building was built in the late
1950s or early 1960s before sprinklers were required. So therefore according to the fire
officials, it was grandfathered in, which is a way of saying they didn't have to put in
sprinklers unless they did some major renovations or something. They never did. The
building is pretty much in its original state. And so they were allowed to have a
nightclub with 350 people jammed in there with no sprinklers.
RAY SUAREZ: But as far as you know, the building was
up to code at the time of the fire?
CHRIS ROWLAND: The building... yes it was. It had
just gone through an inspection about two months ago. It had a couple of minor things they
took care of, but really the big focus of the investigation here is that they had no
permits for these pyrotechnic devices. They had not gone to the state fire marshal to get
their license to operate these or to light these things off, and they had also not gone to
the town of West Warwick and received the appropriate permit. Therefore that's the focus
of the attorney general's investigation at this point as to, you know, why they didn't
have that and what could ultimately become part of a criminal probe.
RAY SUAREZ: Is there a difference of opinion? The
band said it let the club know they were going to set off the fireworks, have these
showers of sparks coming from the stage.
CHRIS ROWLAND: Yeah, the band is sort of pointing
the finger at the owner saying they should have known they had a flammable substance on
their walls. The owners are saying that they were never notified that these pyrotechnic
devices were going to be lit. And the attorney general is saying he's investigating
everybody. No one is off the hook here.
RAY SUAREZ: And are there a lot of people who may
still be in danger of dying at this point?
CHRIS ROWLAND: Well, I'm not too sure. There are 25
people who are in critical condition with really severe burns. I mean many people had
second and third degree burns. And I would say that they are in danger of, if they're in
critical condition. I'm not sure - to tell you the truth -- about the hospital angle at
this point. I've been here for 16 hours at the scene.
RAY SUAREZ: Do they expect to find many more people
at the site?
CHRIS ROWLAND: No, I think that they think that
there may be a few left, but mostly they think they have gotten the full number in the
extent of the investigation. Now they're starting to turn some of the their focus into
digging through the rubble in terms of looking for evidence as opposed to recovering
bodies at this point.
RAY SUAREZ: Chris Rowland from the Boston Globe,
thanks a lot.
CHRIS ROWLAND: You're welcome.
Survivors recount.
Pressed between
blinding black smoke above her and bodies beneath her, Lisa Shea felt certain she would
die in the West Warwick, Rhode Island, nightclub fire.
"The whole place got tons of black smoke. We
were breathing black smoke," a shaken Shea recounted Friday morning with her voice
still raspy from the ordeal. "I got knocked on the ground. People were standing on my
back, my head. I was holding my head and I said, 'I'm going to die here!' All I could
think about was my mother, and I said, 'I got to get up! I got to get up!'"
Shea found her way to another room and leaped
through a window to safety. She recalled seeing people pressing clumps of snow against
their scorched skin. "It was the worst thing I'd ever seen. It was terrible."
On Friday morning, Shea said she was going to the
hospital because she had been vomiting black soot thoughout the night.
Harold Panciera witnessed the fire spread from the
outside of the building and helped a trapped man get out. Panciera said he and the trapped
man could not see one another but could hear one another's voices.
"I started throwing snowballs in there and I
said, 'Can you feel the snow? Crawl towards the snow.' And he did," Panciera said.
"Then I could see him, and he was severely burned all over his upper extremities. I
pulled him out. And there were people laying all over the parking lot and they were just
smoldering."
'Is that part of the show?' Brian Butler, another
patron, was at the Providence-area Station nightclub, which was hosting a concert by the
band Great White. He said many fans watching flames creep down the wall behind the band
during its pyrotechnic display thought the fire was part of the show and didn't
immediately panic.
Rena Gorschalies was one of them. "Someone
said, 'Is that part of the show?' and I said, 'I think it is,'" Gorschalies replied.
"I was watching it and the waitress said, 'I think there's something wrong, you
should go out the door. You should leave.'"
Once clubbers realized the seriousness of the fire,
escape became extremely difficult.
Witness describe rabid
flames enveloping the ceiling. Burning debris fell on Laurie Hussey as she fled.
"Everything was OK until somebody tried to jump
over my head and a bunch of us pretty much got knocked down," Hussey said from her
hospital bed. "I was halfway out of the building and then a gentleman was trying to
pull his girlfriend and me both out because I was on her."
Butler was in a crush of people pushing through the
front door. He got out, but that exit soon became a death trap. "I went back around
the front again and that's when you saw people stacked on top of each other trying to get
out of the front door. And by then the black smoke was pouring out over their heads, out
the side windows on the other side."
Jack Russell, the lead singer for the band Great
White, said in an interview Friday morning that he quickly realized something was wrong
with the band's pyrotechnic show. "I tried to put it out with water bottles," he
said. "There were no fire extinguishers on the stage. The worst part was when the
lights went out."
Butler, a television photographer, was at the club
that night videotaping a segment on nightclub safety. " I noticed when the
pyrotechnics stopped, the flame had kept going on both sides," he said. "I never
expected it to take off as fast as it did. It just, it was so fast. It had to be two
minutes."
John Schmidt said the decision to leave quickly
saved his life because the flames sprinted through the building. " I was very close
to the door," he said. " I'm telling you right now, we wouldn't be having this
conversation if I was in there another 20 seconds."
Rhode Island
Derderians sue insurer for criminal defense
Jeffrey and Michael Derderian, the owners of The
Station nightclub, are suing their insurance company, claiming it should pay to defend
them from felony charges they face in connection with the deaths of 100 people in the Feb.
20, 2003, fire at the club.
The Station was covered by a $2 million liability
policy from the Essex Insurance Co., which included the right to legal defense against
suits seeking damages for bodily injury or property damage, with some limits and only up
to the coverage cap.
Along with the 100 deaths, the fire left over 200
people injured and destroyed the club building, which the Derderians rented. The
Virginia-based insurer is already involved in the slew of civil lawsuits filed against the
club in U.S. District Court. Now, in a new twist, the Derderians want the company’s
help with criminal proceedings.
The Derderians’ claim, filed June 28 in
Superior Court, Providence, points out that Rhode Island’s victims-right statute
provides for an automatic civil judgment against a felony defendant upon his conviction,
finding him liable for damages to the victim.
"Because a verdict against each defendant in
the indictments would result in the imposition of civil judgment for liability and damages
as provided in § 12-28-5, each indictment constitutes a ‘suit’ under the terms
of the Essex policy," they argued.
The brothers tried that argument with Essex, but the
company rejected their claim, leading them to seek a judge’s order to compel the
payment.
Essex’s response to the suit, filed Aug. 17,
vigorously denies any obligations to the Derderians in the criminal case, saying the
coverage they seek "runs contrary to objectively reasonable expectations" of
parties under the policy. It’s also "contrary to the law and the public policy
of the State of Rhode Island." And in any case, Essex argued, the brothers
weren’t personally covered by the policy.
Many of the insurer’s arguments in the case go
well beyond the legal point in question, and suggest that the Derderians could face strong
resistance from Essex in general when it comes to covering claims related to the fire.
The insurer argued, for example, that the brothers
aren’t entitled to compensation because they "failed to exercise ordinary care
for the security of their own position and their own well-being," and because they
failed to mitigate damages.
The Derderians also "failed to perform all of
their obligations" under the terms of the policy, Essex argued, and they "failed
to cooperate with Essex." The insurer also noted that the Dec. 9 indictments against
the brothers alleged that the 100 deaths "were the result of criminal negligence and
unlawful acts by the Derderians."
The Station policy, which was to expire just over a
month after the fire, provided up to $2 million total coverage, or $1 million per
occurrence, with a $100,000 limit for fire damage and $1,000 per person for medical
expenses.
Based on $250,000 in sales, including over 75
percent in liquor sales, the club’s premium for the year was $6,063. The policy did
not include liquor liability – meaning damages resulting from someone being
intoxicated, among other things. It also specifically excluded assaults and related
injuries, as well as injuries or property damage affecting any entertainer, stage hand,
crew, independent contractor, or spectator participating in a show.
The fire at the Station started when fireworks set
off by the band Great White ignited the polyurethane foam that the Derderians had
installed as soundproofing on the walls and ceiling of the stage area. The wood-frame
building was quickly consumed in flames, and scores of patrons were trapped inside.
Along with the Derderians, the former tour manager
for Great White, Daniel Bichele, has been indicted for manslaughter in the 100 deaths. No
trial date has been set. Defendants in the civil cases also include the band, the Town of
West Warwick, a police officer who was on detail at the club during the concert, and foam
manufacturers.
Charged with involuntary manslaughter.
The owners of an American nightclub where 100 people
were killed in a fire have been charged with involuntary manslaughter.
Club owners were each charged with 200 counts of
involuntary manslaughter - two counts for each of the 100 deaths.
They were charged with having the flammable
soundproofing foam that caused the fire to spread, and for alleged negligence in their
management of the The Station nightclub in Rhode Island.
Great White tour manager was charged with 200 counts
of involuntary manslaughter for setting off the stage fireworks that caused the fire.
All three men pleaded innocent and were released on
bail.
Fire swept through The Station club in February
after fireworks set off by the band ignited soundproofing foam.
Within minutes the small wooden building was
engulfed in flames and the club full of choking smoke.
The band's guitarist was among those killed in the
blaze.
The club owners have always denied the band's claim
that the club gave the go-ahead for the fireworks to be used.
2003-- At least 54 heavy metal
fans have been killed after a nightclub erupted into flames during a pyrotechnics display
at a rock concert. More than 150 others have sustained injuries as mobs
frantically rushed to escape the raging fire in Rhode Island, US. As
firefighters searched through the charred shell of the one-storey wood building, they
concluded the entire club was consumed by flames within three minutes.
Video shot by CNN affiliate WPRI showed the band performing Thursday as
on-stage fireworks went off in the background. As the crowd cheered, fire engulfed the
soundproofing foam behind the stage and quickly spread.