Killer Show

by John Barylick

  Whether a nightclub’s staff responds immediately and properly to a fire emergency depends entirely upon its training. The Station’s employees were given no instruction on how to respond to emergencies, despite the well-publicized deaths of twenty-one people at the E2 Club in Chicago just three days before Great White’s appearance. Instead, Jeff Derderian’s reaction to the Chicago tragedy was to shoot generic video at his own club so that he could narrate a sensationalized piece about nightclub safety.

  Other clubs, however, responded more substantively to Chicago’s wakeup call. Management of the Fine Line Café in Minneapolis reviewed safety procedures with its staff on February 17 in response to the deaths earlier that day in Chicago. When Jet City Fix’s pyro ignited the Fine Line’s ceiling that very evening, club staff immediately, and successfully, directed all patrons to the exits.

  It didn’t hurt that the Fine Line’s crowd was well below its legal maximum when fire broke out. That was not the case at The Station. Whereas the Fine Line Café’s management reviewed club capacity and drilled its employees in evacuation procedures, the Derderians’ response to the Chicago deaths was to sell business cards and pieces of notebook paper when they ran out of printed tickets for the Great White concert. No cash patron was turned away from the door that night. As reconstructed by the Providence Journal from post-fire interviews, it is reliably believed that no fewer than 462 people were inside The Station (officially inflated capacity, 404) when fire broke out.

  When Dan Biechele closed the circuit to his illegal pyro setup on the night of the fire, he could not have known the many hazards surrounding him: walls lined with “solid gasoline”; no sprinkler system; an overcrowded club with staff untrained in fire procedures. But even if some of those perils had been eliminated, it still would not have guaranteed people’s safety. Because all had to exit quickly. And an exit is worthless if it’s not known, if it’s the only one known or, worse yet, if someone denies you its use. The Station had all three.

  CHAPTER 12

  I’M WITH THE BAND

  MIKE IANNONE HAD COME TO THE STATION to see Great White, but also to support his friends whose band, Fathead, opened the evening. Mike, who had helped Fathead load-in on previous occasions, was very familiar with the club’s layout, including the stage door on the right. He was also familiar with the use of pyrotechnics at the club, having walked out of a concert there in 2002 when a band called Rebellion used flashpots on either side of the stage.

  So, the moment Great White ignited its four blinding-white 15 × 15 Pyropak gerbs in The Station at 11:05 p.m. on February 20, 2003, Mike Iannone knew he was out of there. By all accounts, he did everything right. He didn’t even wait until he saw flames. He didn’t stop to gather belongings. He didn’t seek out friends to join him. He didn’t remain “committed” to the entertainment he had paid to see. He didn’t even head to the door he’d come in by. Rather, Iannone turned to the nearest exit he knew — the stage door.

  The stage door at The Station had a history. One of the three exit doors counted by Fire Marshal Larocque in his capacity calculations for the club, it was the exit with one foam-covered, handleless, inward-swinging door and a second, outward-swinging door immediately behind it. The inner door was the one that club staff took down, then rehung, three years running after fire inspections cited it as a code violation. It was also the exit nearest to foam salesman Barry Warner’s house.

  From the Derderians’ perspective, the stage exit posed two problems, both of which boiled down to economics. The exit’s doors — both of them — had to remain closed when bands were playing; otherwise neighbors would shut the club down. Left unguarded, that exit could also admit nonpaying interlopers.

  The Derderians solved both problems with a simple rule: the door would remain closed any time a band was playing. Between sets, when bands were loading in or out and recorded music was playing at much lower volume, the door could be used — by band personnel only. As to the door’s function as an emergency exit — well, that might still be possible. If you were with the band.

  Enforcement of the “band door” rule would be the province of the club’s bouncers, some of whom were experienced and responsible. Others, however, were no more than undertrained and overbuilt club “regulars” who, as often as not, performed their function for free beer and a chance to wear black EVENT SECURITY T-shirts and exercise authority over patrons. Apparently, “security” had a better ring to it than “barfly.” For this subgroup, training was necessarily kept simple. One rule sufficed: no one but “band” was allowed to use the stage door.

  When Mike Iannone saw the pyrotechnics erupt, he sprinted for the stage door. As he neared the door, a bouncer grabbed his arm and barked, “Band only exit.” One forceful shove sent Iannone stumbling back into the crowd. As soon as he regained control of his feet, Mike headed toward the club’s front doors, soon to be joined by hundreds of others. The delay resulted in his getting as far as the front corridor, between the inner single door and the outside double doors, when people behind him lost their footing and toppled over onto him, trapping him in place. Iannone would not move from that location under his own power. By the time firemen extricated him, one of Mike’s hands, exposed to blowtorch-intensity heat, was burned beyond hope of salvage.

  Fred Crisostomi, a painter, and his girlfriend, Gina Russo, a medical secretary, had called The Station at 10:20 that night to inquire if there were any more tickets available. Sure. Just come down. Ten minutes later, Andrea Mancini collected their cash (there were no “tickets” left), stamped their hands, and they were in. Fred and Gina bought drinks and worked their way to the apron of the stage just in time for Great White’s pyrotechnics.

  They were among the first to appreciate the difference between fire and fireworks. Both immediately put their drinks on the stage and headed to their right. Crisostomi was familiar with the club’s layout and guided Gina to the stage door. A bouncer stood in front of the door, arms crossed, blocking the way. “This is for band members only,” he declared. “The club is on fire! Let us out! Open the door!” they screamed. The bouncer held his ground.

  Gina knew they could not spend time arguing with him. She turned and headed toward the front door, with Fred pushing and shoving her through the crowd. Sounds of screams, breaking glass, and popping flames filled her ears. A “black rain” fell from the ceiling, setting people aflame. Gina’s sweatshirt, jeans, and Nike sneakers offered scant protection. She felt Fred’s hand in the middle of her back, shoving her toward the door, as he yelled, “Just go!” When all progress stopped in the front hallway and Gina toppled, there was no one underneath her as she hit the floor. She said a prayer for her two boys and passed out from the searing smoke. Eleven weeks later, when she emerged from a medically induced coma in a Boston hospital, Gina would learn that Fred Crisostomi had perished in the club. Russo herself sustained horrific burns to her head, torso, limbs, and lungs.

  The Station’s approach to providing concert security was somewhat ad hoc. The day of the fire, club manager Kevin Beese called up his buddy Scott Vieira to see if Scott wanted to help out as a bouncer for the Great White concert. Vieira had done it a few times before, for “a couple beers,” and it beat hanging around the house — which was what he found himself doing quite a bit of, ever since 1994 when he injured his ankle in a workplace accident at a General Motors plant. Since then, he’d been on disability.

  The Ocean State is, perhaps, the only one in which unemployment is described by an active verb, as in, “Wadda you doin’?” “ ‘I’m collectin’. ” A disability pension is like hitting the Rhode Island unemployment jackpot. It is regarded by some with a mixture of envy and awe.

  Vieira and his wife, Kelly, lived less than a mile from The Station. When Kelly dutifully went off to her work each day as a physical therapy assistant, she’d leave a job list for her husband. The list kept him “pretty busy,” but after a while, Scott would get bored, what with “everybody being at work,” and wander do
wn to The Station to hang out with Kevin Beese and the club regulars. Afternoons, when Vieira was done working in his own yard, he’d head over to The Station. Most nights, by 5:30 he’d be at The Station’s bar with fewer than a dozen others. When it snowed, the employment-disabled Vieira would help Beese shovel the walks and open the place up. Sometimes Vieira would carry cases of beer or buckets of ice around the club. Other days he’d help Beese take keg inventory in the basement. It wasn’t a formal arrangement (as might appear on any employment or tax record), but more an unspoken one whereby Beese would occasionally draw Vieira a beer without charge — a performance bonus, of sorts.

  Vieira’s work at The Station may not have been formalized, but his status as a privileged “regular” certainly was. He was literally a card-carrying VIP, having been issued laminated ID cards attesting to that status by both Howard Julian and, later, the Derderians. It was not a membership he had to pay for. As Vieira explained, “It was just given to the regulars that were there all the time spending money on the off hours.” Membership had its privileges. Vieira never paid a cover charge, and “regulars” paid a lower price for their drinks. “There was no reason to charge people at night if they’re already paying their dues throughout the week sitting there keeping the business [going],” he observed.

  On the afternoon of the Great White concert, Scott Vieira helped the band load in, rolling heavy cases across the frozen parking lot and into the building. He went home for dinner, then returned to the club at 7 wearing a black T-shirt that read THE STATION in white letters across the chest and EVENT SECURITY across the back. Around 8:30, he took up position at the right-hand corner of the stage, more to watch his friends in Fathead than to perform any real security function. By 10:30, though, he was assigned to the area leading to the band room and stage door, where he stood with his wife, Kelly, nearby. As Vieira explained it, his “main goal was to watch forward and make sure that nobody came into the area that didn’t belong.” From prior experience, he could recite the Band Door Rules: “Just make sure no one came through the door that didn’t belong there, or a non-band member. Just so someone wouldn’t open it, mainly while music was going on . . . to allow sound to go out through an open door; or make sure no one snuck in while the door was supposed to be closed.”

  According to Vieira, when the fire broke out, he went to the band room to get water and emerged with several bottles, only to drop them to the floor when he realized that they would have no effect. By then, Great White had left the stage and exited through the band door. By his own account, Vieira then moved into the dance floor and atrium areas, yelling for patrons to “come this way” through the band door. His wife, Kelly, was, unfortunately, not among them. Vieira denies having directed anyone away from the stage door at any time that night.

  But someone did direct Rob Feeney and his fiancée, Donna Mitchell, away from the band door. Feeney and Mitchell, along with a group that included Pamela Gruttadauria (whose cousin had delivered the foam sheets to The Station for his employer, American Foam Corporation, three years earlier), arrived at the club around 8, but first headed across the street to the Cowesett Inn for dinner. At 9:40, they entered The Station as the second band, Trip, was setting up to play. Feeney saw the stage door exit was open, with band personnel coming in and going out.

  Following Trip’s set, Rob and Donna watched “Dr. Metal” and his HJY interns throw merchandise from the stage and hype up the crowd. They stood near the right side of the stage when Great White went on. Shortly after the gerbs ignited, Rob told Donna, “Look behind the sparks — the wall is on fire!” He saw Jack Russell try to throw water at the blaze. As the flames began to lick the ceiling, Feeney shouted to Donna, “That’s the closest door,” and pushed her toward the stage door. Just then, a black T-shirt-clad bouncer, “about 5’10” tall, with short dark hair and a cigarette in his mouth” put his hand on Donna’s shoulder and told her, “You gotta use the front door.” Feeney was directly behind Donna when this exchange occurred. His instinct was to challenge the order, but Donna had already turned toward the front door, so he followed her.

  Rob and Donna made it only a short distance toward the front door when searing heat knocked them to the floor. As flames roiled across the ceiling, they heard glass breaking, lightbulbs popping, and nonstop screaming. Rob picked Donna up and told her to cover her face with her hands. Again, they were knocked down by smoke so thick that the only light penetrating it was from flame itself. As they struggled to get up, a man, engulfed in flames, ran into them, knocking both flat. Feeney dragged himself to Donna’s legs, laid his head on her feet, and prepared to die.

  John Gibbs and Kevin Dunn had driven Kevin’s beat-up Kia from Attleboro, Massachusetts, to West Warwick earlier that night to see Great White. Kevin had called ahead to reserve a ticket; however, when they arrived at the club at 10:45, the procedure was less formal — they paid cash and got their hands stamped. Gibbs and Dunn made their way through the crowd to the T-shirt table set up in the atrium, but they didn’t have enough money to buy shirts. John turned to Kevin and said, “Let’s get real close to the stage,” so they elbowed their way to the edge of the stage.

  When Great White’s pyro ignited the foam, the pair stayed where they were until the band stopped playing and Jack Russell muttered “That’s not good” into his microphone. Then Gibbs and Dunn sought out the nearest exit — the stage door — where multiple black-shirted bouncers turned them and others away, stating the door was “reserved for the band” and physically pushing them toward the front of the club. Gibbs described one as clean-shaven, with black hair — “about 6 foot, ’cause I’m 5'11" ” and wearing a black T-shirt with “THE STATION” on it. He remembers talking with this particular bouncer before Great White went on.

  Denied egress through the stage door, Gibbs and Dunn made their way through the smoke into the atrium, holding on to each other’s hands in the dark. Gibbs lost his grip on Dunn and found himself underneath one of the pool tables, where a box of souvenir T-shirts had been placed. He clutched a shirt to his nose and mouth but soon lost consciousness. Gibbs came to outside an atrium window, but does not believe he exited under his own power. He never saw Kevin Dunn again.

  Stephanie and Nicole Conant from Medford, Massachusetts, had been to The Station three or four times and seen Great White a dozen times before. The sisters socialized with the band inside the club between 4 and 5 p.m. on the afternoon of their Station appearance and, when questioned by club employees, assured them that they were “with the band.”

  When the foam insulation on The Station’s walls caught fire, Nicole and Stephanie were standing down front near the band room and stage door. Familiar with that door from the load-in earlier, the Conants headed for it. “The gentleman that leaned on the side of the stage, who worked for The Station, saw it going up and didn’t seem to do a lot besides just lean there smoking a cigarette,” recalled Stephanie. “Then he finally swung the back door open and we ran out the back door. Behind us was a few of the band members.”

  Another individual with unfettered access to the stage door area was John Arpin, a club bouncer of long standing, who occasionally filled in cooking chicken nuggets, jalapeno poppers, and “other Fry-O-Lator food” (his categorization) at The Station when pressed. Arpin stood near Scott Vieira in a similar black T-shirt at the apron of the stage, in the area leading to the stage door, when Great White lit its pyrotechnics. He describes leaving that area as soon as he saw the pyro ignite the foam-covered walls and “plowing through the crowd” to the far opposite end of the club “to get a fire extinguisher from the kitchen.” According to Arpin, when he returned as far as the light and sound board, it was clear that the extinguisher would do no good, so he returned to the kitchen, where he exited through a door known only to staff. Arpin denies that he or any other bouncer refused egress to any patron through the stage door on the night of the fire.

  One family that might disagree with Arpin was the Cormiers — Donna, her husband,
Bruce, stepson Tim, and stepdaughter Brenda. They had driven down from Foxboro, Massachusetts; all were excited about the concert, especially after Donna heard Jack Russell interviewed by Dr. Metal on WHJY, promising a “monster show” with pyrotechnics.

  As the hour for Great White’s concert approached, the Cormiers clustered near the stage, to the right, over by the band exit. Donna watched Jack Russell stretching, hopping up and down, and deep-breathing in the shadows, pumping himself up for a triumphant return to the West Warwick stage. When the band’s fifteen-foot sparklers erupted, it was no surprise to Donna. But when nickel-sized balls of flame appeared on the foam walls behind the sparks, that was a different story.

  “Bruce, the wall is on fire,” yelled Donna to her husband over the din.

  “They’ll put that right out,” he responded.

  “No, the wall is on fire,” Donna insisted. She had never seen anything go up so fast. When Jack Russell splashed his water bottle at it, she thought, “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen.”

  Bruce Cormier took two steps to his left and grabbed his son Tim by his collar, literally lifting him off his feet. Donna Cormier turned to Brenda and said, “We’re out of here,” pointing to the nearby stage door. As the family stepped toward the door, a STATION T-shirt-clad bouncer with a shaved head told two men in front of them that they could not use the exit. The two men turned back into the club, slipping past the Cormiers in the opposite direction. When the Cormiers reached the door, the same smooth-headed bouncer raised his left arm and said, “You have to use the other exit.” Donna was tempted to stop when her husband bellowed, “You fucking idiot. The place is on fire.” And with that, he shoved his family right into the bouncer, forcing him aside and delivering his loved ones to safety. Once outside, Tim turned and started back up the steps, exclaiming, “My leather jacket!” Donna screamed, “I have your jacket!” and the boy aborted his potentially fatal action.