Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (25 page)

Engine 4 came to a halt perpendicular to the club, less than one hundred feet from its front door. Flames shot from windows and out the front entrance, where victims still lay jammed in the doorway. St. Jean pulled an inch-and-three-quarter “attack line” off the truck, while Perkins manned the pump that would deliver the contents of the truck’s 750-gallon tank on St. Jean’s command. The lieutenant began to spray inside the front entrance with his hand line, trying to knock down the flames roaring about the trapped victims.

Ladder 4’s crew arrived just after Engine 4 and parked their truck on Kulas Road, to the club’s left. They ran to the front entrance and took over St. Jean’s line. St. Jean grabbed a second hand line off Engine 4 and rejoined the fight at the front doors.

At one point, St. Jean turned to Patrolman Mark Knott, who stood near him at the front doors. “Is my back on fire?” shouted St. Jean. It was not, but melting roof shingles above the doorway were dripping hot asphalt onto the firefighter’s turnout jacket, heating his skin right through its fireproof material. The unfortunates entangled at his feet lacked any similar protection.

Under standard firefighting protocol, building fires are fought from within using hand lines until the presence of live occupants and salvage of the structure have both been ruled out. Given the extent of fire involvement when firefighters first arrived at The Station, lifesaving was the immediate and sole objective. Firemen wielding hand lines within the structure sought to establish search/rescue paths through doors and use their streams to “fog” or spray, such that volumes of water droplets would immediately absorb
BTUS
and quell the blaze. During this “offensive” phase of firefighting, use of high-pressure, high-volume “master stream” devices such as fixed or portable deck guns, ladder guns, and aerial platform guns is generally out of the question. These water cannons can each deliver upward of one thousand gallons per minute, and their recoil force is such that they must be anchored to ground or truck. Their streams are capable of knocking down walls and gravely injuring firefighters or civilians in their vicinity. Nevertheless, the Station fire was so advanced, and the need to drive flame back from the front entrance so urgent, that engine deck guns and an aerial platform gun were actually brought into play while firefighters still searched for survivors.

This was accomplished by Fire Captain Kevin Sullivan standing on Warwick Ladder 1’s aerial platform, where he could observe the positions of firefighters working within the building’s wreckage. Using hand signals, Sullivan would alert firefighters before sweeping their area with the massive water cannon.

Engines and ladder trucks from other West Warwick stations and two nearby communities arrived in short order, connecting to hydrants on Kulas
Road, Cowesett Avenue, and Narragansett Avenue with three-and four-inch supply lines. The group effort was not, however, without the inevitable minor miscues that occur during firefighting’s fog of war.

Two three-inch supply lines laid from the Cowesett Avenue hydrant to West Warwick Engine 2 blocked the street, preventing positioning of the Warwick tower ladder truck. They had to be disconnected to let Warwick Ladder 1 pass. Then, one Cranston fire company mistakenly laid a four-inch supply line from the Narragansett Avenue hydrant directly to Warwick’s Ladder 1, a tower ladder with a platform gun, but no pump. When the absence of water pressure became apparent, West Warwick Engine 4 shut down its deck gun and began pumping water to Warwick Ladder 1, providing it with sufficient pressure for Captain Sullivan to use the master stream gun on its aerial platform.

West Warwick’s Special Hazards Unit parked at the corner of Cowesett Avenue and Kulas Road. There, its crew extended the truck’s light tower thirty feet skyward and aimed it at what was left of The Station, blessedly turning night into day for the harried rescuers.

About thirty minutes into the firefighting/rescue effort, the atrium wall collapsed, and several firefighters were hit with falling debris. As a result, the incident commander, West Warwick chief Charles Hall, ordered the structure evacuated and a personnel accountability roll call (
PAR
) taken. Sirens and air horns on the assembled vehicles blared, and a radio alert went out to call back all firefighters. Each department conducted its own head count. All men were accounted for. Because some live victims might still be inside, however, Chief Hall immediately ordered firefighters back into the building to continue their feverish work.

Firefighters at The Station fought not only fire, but cold as well. Over a foot of snow had fallen in the previous two days. West Warwick Engine 1 laid three hundred feet of four-inch supply line to a hydrant on steeply sloped Kulas Road. From its position alongside the club, Engine 1 then directed its deck gun on the blaze. It was not long, however, before spray from the deck gun, combined with freezing temperatures, glazed Kulas Road with ice, causing Engine 1 to slide down the hill, where it hit West Warwick Ladder 1 before coming to rest. Nothing would be easy that night.

Several West Warwick policemen heard Patrolman Bettencourt’s initial radio call that “The Station’s on fire” and Patrolman Knott’s terse “stampede” transmission seconds later. Detectives Gary Appolonia and Brian Araujo, already on the road, sped toward the scene in response. As they crested the hill nearest
the club, billowing smoke told them things would not be good. What they saw as they drew closer exceeded their worst fears: men and women staggering, the flesh of their limbs and faces melted; victims running from the club in flames; others collapsed in the snow with hair and clothes still afire. All the detectives could do was assist some victims in moving farther from the heat of the building. The sheer number of wounded was overwhelming.

Patrolman Jason Senerchia approached The Station that night with more trepidation than many of his brethren. His lifelong friend, Christopher Arruda, was a Station regular and had invited Senerchia to hear Great White with him. But Jason had a shift to work, and begged off. Now he looked across at the parking lot of the Nissan dealership across from the club — to the space where Chris Arruda always parked his pickup truck. Sadly, Arruda’s green Ford Ranger occupied its customary spot. Senerchia never spotted his friend that night among the escaped patrons and walking wounded. It would be three days before he learned that one of the bodies recovered from the club’s wreckage was Arruda’s.

After a while, temperatures near the building exceeded tenability for anyone without full firefighting gear, particularly helmet and face shield. As a result, policemen Bettencourt and Knott retreated to the club’s left, toward Kulas Road, where they paused to catch their breath. Bettencourt allowed his gaze to rise slowly toward the heavens. “The power lines!” he yelled. The electric wires feeding the club from a transformer on the pole directly above them were crackling. Both cops bolted and were in mid-stride when a small explosion brought the lines down on the spot where they had stood only seconds earlier.

Patrolman Stephen Vannini was among the first cops to respond to Bettencourt’s call. He had been at The Station only thirty minutes earlier, “assisting” Bettencourt with his security detail, along with Patrolman Knott. Called out to the same domestic disturbance as Knott, Vannini was disappointed at having to leave the club just minutes before Great White came on. He had no idea he’d be back so soon.

When Vannini pulled his cruiser into The Station’s parking lot, he immediately noticed a blond male lying on the pavement, near the club’s roadside sign. “He appeared dead, with a massive head injury,” recalls Vannini. He saw the building completely engulfed in flames and people running from it, similarly aflame. He yelled to them, “Roll in the snow!” He ran to several, trying to pat their flames out with his gloved hands. When Vannini saw rescuers at the broken bar windows pulling burning victims to safety, he assisted by dragging the injured farther from the burning building.

Several victims lay in the parking lot, still smoldering. Hoping to cool them down, Vannini grabbed extinguishers from fire trucks, wielding one and handing others to civilians. When he pointed his extinguisher at one badly burned victim, its stream came out too hard, tearing burned skin off the man’s body. Vannini tried applying snow, instead.

Around the parking lot, psychological injuries were as prevalent as burns. Officer Michael Sullivan of the Warwick police arrived on-scene to find “several dozen” persons who had suffered burns to the head, arms, face, and hands. On the pavement lay multiple bodies. Amid this horror, one survivor approached Sullivan, the nearest uniformed authority figure, in desperation. “My wife is in there. We have three kids. What am I going to do?” he pleaded. With no answer possible, Sullivan turned to another man to check his condition. The second man’s “thousand-yard stare” reflected psychological decompensation. “You have no idea. You have no idea. Stay away from me. Don’t even come near me!” repeated the obviously traumatized man. Believing both subjects to be physically unharmed, Sullivan left to assist other victims.

Great White’s tour bus was parked lengthwise a few feet from the atrium windows, where it blocked half the small building’s width, impeding firefighters’ efforts. West Warwick policeman Sean Duffy demanded that it be moved, and Dan Biechele tried his best to comply. But Biechele was the band’s road manager, not its bus driver, and he didn’t know how to release the huge vehicle’s brakes.

The telephone in John Kubus’s room at the Fairfield Inn motel startled him out of sound sleep at 11:21 p.m. As Great White’s bus driver, his routine was generally to drive while the band slept, and sleep while they played. It was Dan Biechele on the phone, wanting to know how to release the brakes on the bus. Kubus asked why, but Biechele didn’t answer. Kubus told him where the release was, and Biechele said, “Hold on,” putting the phone down. Kubus could hear excited voices in the background. About thirty seconds later, Biechele picked up the phone and told Kubus, “There’s a fire at the club — I’ll call you back.”

Assuming it was just a small fire, Great White’s driver rolled over and went back to sleep. Around 12:30, Biechele called again. This time Kubus asked, “How’s my bus?” Biechele told him that his bus was fine, but that their rhythm guitarist, Ty Longley, was missing. Only then did Kubus appreciate that this was no “small fire.”

Back in a parking lot across the street from the burning Station, David “Scooter” Stone, the club’s light technician, stood shell-shocked. He had to be
in an ecstasy of fear. Stone had been present for multiple pyro bands at The Station, and had even assisted his lighting mentor, Frank “Grimace” Davidson, as he wired up Human Clay’s New Year’s Eve pyro show. Scooter was told by Dan Biechele that night that Great White would use pyro, so that the light tech could execute the right cues. He had no idea this night’s pyro would be any different from prior. Stone had escaped with other club employees through the little-known kitchen door. And now, he watched The Station burn.

As Stone stood staring at the inferno, his cell phone rang. It was his onthe-job lighting and pyro instructor, “Grimace” Davidson. Grimace had been watching the 11 o’clock news on
TV
when a “breaking news” bulletin announced that The Station was in flames. Suspecting that pyro had something to do with it, Davidson immediately called Stone, demanding, “What the fuck happened, Dude? Was it the pyro?” Stone stammered, “Dude, it looked fine to me. I don’t know.” Then, Davidson heard the call disconnect. He had to figure that his upcoming video pyro shoot, scheduled by Station manager Kevin Beese for the following Monday, would not be going forward.

Later that evening, when the flames had been knocked down and the fire “called,” Roger St. Jean and Aaron Perkins from Fire Station 4 were relieved of duty. They stood at the canteen truck that served first responders, gulped coffee in the frigid air, and tried to make sense of the horror surrounding them. A man with chin-length dirty-blond hair stepped out from the shadows and asked, “Everybody make it out all right?” His question was met with stunned silence. The man was Jack Russell.