And the second time around, the nightclub got a clean bill of health. During the first inspection, nine minor code violations were found. The West Warwick fire marshal had conducted two fire inspections of the Station nightclub in the months preceding this event. On the other hand, there was the problem of that flammable acoustic foam that I mentioned earlier. However, when it was converted decades later into a nightclub, that exemption should have disappeared and sprinklers should have been installed. And under Rhode Island Fire Code at the time, a restaurant of that size did not require fire sprinklers. So when this building was constructed back in 1946, it was designed as a restaurant. Medwed: On the one hand, there was the absence of an automatic fire sprinkler. And the city of West Warwick, the state of Rhode Island, also shouldered part of the blame here.Īlston: Daniel, you just mentioned that there were breakdowns in the safety inspections. Third, and finally, there were many perceived breakdowns in the fire safety inspection protocol process. It made sense that a lot of people were trying to exit through the entrance where they had come from, right? In addition, this was aggravated by the fact that it had a maximum occupancy of 404 people and there were 462 people in the venue that night. Now, even though there were four exits in the facility, a lot of people died during the stampede because of a bottleneck in a narrow space near the front door. Second, there were the nightclub owners, the Derderians, two brothers who purchased it back in 2000. There's a little bit of a dispute about whether he had authorization from the nightclub to do this, but he was certainly one of the people who shouldered a lot of the blame. ![]() They were for gerbs, which are cylindrical devices that contain controlled sprays of sparks. First and foremost, there was the tour manager, Daniel Biechele, who, after all, ignited those pyrotechnics. There was a lot of blame being bandied about to different people, and it seemed like three different parties deserve to shoulder a lot of the responsibility. ![]() How would you describe what went wrong here and who might legally or morally be deemed responsible for it? And when you have this many people who were killed, there's obviously a lot of finger-pointing and discussion about who was at fault. And as you said at the outset, 100 people died in the aftermath of this event, making it the second-deadliest fire in New England nightclub history, surpassed only by the infamous Cocoanut Grove disaster back in 1942, right here in Boston. ![]() Unfortunately, the soundproofing in the walls and ceilings surrounding the stage contained some flammable foam, acoustic foam, that immediately ignited and created what some fire scientists would call a flashover effect, which is basically, as far as they understand it, when every combustible item in the vicinity of an enclosed space basically goes ablaze, creating lots of flames and heat and smoke. And to accompany their first song, their tour manager launched some pyrotechnics. on Feb., 20, 2003, the heavy metal band Great White took the stage at the Station nightclub. Memorial Park Honors Victims Of 2003 Rhode Island Nightclub Fireĭaniel Medwed: At around 11 p.m.
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