Killer Show

by John Barylick

  The sequence of a room fire is terrifying in its predictability. In its beginning stage, flames are localized in the first fuel ignited — in the case of The Station, the polyurethane foam on the walls of the drummer’s alcove. The room still has normal oxygen content (fire hasn’t won the contest yet), and overall temperatures have not begun to rise (witness Great White onstage, still slamming power chords while flames develop behind them). Convection carries byproducts of combustion to the upper part of the room, in this case the peaked ceiling area above The Station’s stage, as it draws oxygen in at the bottom of the flames.

  In the next, “free-burning,” stage, fire raises the stakes, laying claim to the room’s upper reaches. The layer of atmosphere near the ceiling, in which fire has already prevailed, has low oxygen content, high temperatures, opaque density, and partially burned pyrolysis products. The floor layer, however, remains up for grabs, with relatively cool, fresh air. Survival is possible if one stays low. But not for long.

  Though most people don’t know it, the smoke layer itself can catch fire. If ventilation is limited, incompletely burned pyrolysis products will gather into a fuel-rich layer that expands lower and lower into the room, its temperature steadily climbing, until one or more fuels in the airborne mix reaches its ignition temperature. Then, the layer catches fire and flames may extend across the ceiling of the room in a process called rollover. The flame front in this fuel-air cloud can outrun the fastest human, progressing at a rate of ten to fifteen feet per second.

  Karen Gordon and her husband, Paul, competed in such a lopsided footrace. They were standing at the back bar when Great White’s pyro ignited the foam. Unable to exit through the overcrowded front doors, they scrambled into the main horseshoe bar area beneath a dense smoke layer “four feet from the ceiling” with a “thin line of fire” moving through it. Both narrowly escaped the flame front, tumbling out the bar door through searing heat.

  Once flames have “rolled over” a room’s ceiling, its entire surface can become a source of downward radiated heat. When this layer reaches a critical temperature of approximately 1,100°F, all fuels in the room (including wood, fabric, clothes, and hair) burst into flame. This is called flashover. At this point, fire wins, and escape without grievous injury is impossible.

  Flashover first occurred at The Station within the drummer’s alcove. Computer modeling and full-scale testing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggest that the drummer’s alcove reached flashover within sixty seconds of the polyurethane foam’s ignition. At that point, all fuels within that small space would have burst into flame. Eric Powers’s drum set may not have contributed significantly to the overall fuel load, but the same cannot necessarily be said of other materials there — especially some installed by Howard Julian as early as 1996. These materials would later shed light on the Station fire’s central mystery: why it so quickly became inescapable.

  Sometimes a room fire will consume too much available oxygen to allow open-flame ignition of airborne fuel. In such situations, ignition of the gas layer may not occur within the building at all, but instead the fuel-rich smoke will ignite as it leaves the tops of door and window openings, mixing with outside air. On the night of the Station fire, Brian Butler continued shooting video for WPRI-TV long after he exited the club’s front doors. Where the video focuses back on the front doors and windows of the club, this phenomenon is plainly visible, with blowtorch flames belching from window and door tops.

  Fire scientists have established limits of survivability (called “tenability”) in the fire/human contest with respect to temperature, radiant energy, and available oxygen. As to temperature, it is generally believed that 250°F is the limit of human tolerance. For radiant energy, a “heat flux” exceeding 2.5 KW per square meter (just 2 ½ times the radiation of direct summer sun) will pretty much do you in. And we all need at least 12 percent oxygen in our air in order to remain in contention. Exceeding one tenability threshold does not instantly mean “game over,” but the final buzzer certainly looms. Duration of exposure, rate of change, and susceptibility of the individual to these conditions all play roles. As the NIST investigation generally concluded, most occupants of The Station had less than ninety seconds to escape under tenable conditions.

  One area of the club that exceeded the temperature threshold for tenability within ninety seconds was the east end of the atrium, adjacent to the front door corridor. According to the NIST models, change in that area was “rapid and extreme,” going from ambient to flame temperatures (1,830°F) within just ten seconds. It is little surprise that nineteen bodies were recovered from this kiln-like corner of the club.

  Consistent with known behavior of room fires, the NIST models exhibited a striking difference in tenability five feet from the floor of The Station, and two feet from its floor. While temperatures five feet off the floor in the main bar area probably exceeded the death threshold within 100 seconds, the temperature two feet from the floor remained survivable for several minutes, due to inflow of fresh air through broken bar windows. Sure enough, the Butler video shows one victim being pulled alive from a bar window at 250 seconds after foam ignition, long after survival in any part of the atrium had become impossible.

  Once the superheated gas layer in The Station descended to within two feet of the floor, victims like Linda Fisher, who had crawled within reach of a window, faced a Hobson’s choice: rise to escape (and expose their upper bodies to blast-furnace heat) or die seconds later on the floor. Not surprisingly, survival instinct compelled most to attempt escape, with the result that many sustained the very worst burns to their head, back, shoulders, and arms.

  In addition to keeping temperatures survivable, flow of air through the broken bar windows also provided a layer of tenable oxygen concentration near the floor of the main bar sufficient to sustain life. According to the NIST models, at two minutes post-ignition, most of The Station had only a 2 percent O2 concentration; however, the floor of the main bar still maintained tenable oxygen levels.

  The NIST report concluded that only one other area of the club could have remained even theoretically survivable throughout the worst of the conflagration. It was a small three-dimensional space at the front double doors to the club. Shaped like an isosceles triangle with its base facing the outside, the four foot-high wedge had a hypotenuse that sloped downward to meet the floor several feet inside the entrance corridor. Temperatures and oxygen concentration in that wedge, alone, just might have been compatible with sustaining life. The same could not be said for the rest of the club.

  CHAPTER 14

  A SNOWBALL’S CHANCE IN HELL

  NO PATRONS ENTERING THE STATION through its front doors on the night of the fire anticipated that they’d be leaving any other way. Certainly, Shamus Horan, a twenty-seven-year-old master pipefitter from Coventry, Rhode Island, did not. He was among several quite ordinary people who would perform extraordinary deeds that night.

  On the evening of the Great White concert, Horan stopped at The Station to see if there were any tickets left. Sold out of actual tickets, Andrea Mancini took Shamus’s money and tore off a corner piece of lined notebook paper, writing on it, “Admit 5 people.” “Class operation,” thought Shamus. He returned later that night with his fiancée, his older brother, and another couple, to find Jeff Derderian manning the ticket desk. When he showed Derderian his scrap of notebook paper, the owner admitted his party without challenge. Apparently, overselling available tickets was nothing unusual at The Station.

  Horan’s group was standing, wedged shoulder to shoulder, about five rows from the stage, next to cameraman Brian Butler, when Great White came on and their pyrotechnics went off. As soon as Shamus saw flames on the walls, he knew from his HVAC work that the burning plastic foam would quickly make the air unbreathable, so he steered his party toward the front door.

  Shamus’s group had not made it as far as the ticket desk when dense smoke began to roll over their heads and the crowd ja
mmed the corridor leading out the front doors. He lost track of his brother but moved with others into the main horseshoe bar area, where, amazingly, some patrons still sat on stools, oblivious of the growing peril. Horan spotted a window, but it was immediately obscured by the roiling smoke. He threw his body toward where the window had been, crashing through its glass and landing on the concrete wheelchair ramp outside. Instinct caused him to immediately scramble away from the building. But seconds later, a very different instinct kicked in. Horan vaulted back over the ramp railing toward the shattered window opening and began reaching in to pull others through. Acrid black smoke poured from the broken window, blocking anyone inside from his view. Operating by feel, and holding his breath, Shamus pulled five or six gasping people out. Each slid under the railing on the ramp, toward the parking lot. As he reached, grabbed, and pulled, over and over, Horan dearly hoped that his girlfriend, his brother, or their friends would be next to come through.

  Another window remained intact to the left of the one through which Shamus had escaped. He found a metal beer sign on the ground and used it to smash that one, pulling at least one person through it. Returning to the first window, he would take a breath of outside air and stretch inside, pulling out whomever he could grasp. As seen on Butler’s video, Horan pulled several more victims through, but none that he recognized. Consistent with the reconstruction by the NIST computer modeling and large-scale testing, Horan was able to pull survivors from broken bar windows well past the time when temperatures back in the atrium exceeded 1,000 degrees. Luck of location had brought them not only to a tenable space several minutes after the fire’s ignition, but within reach of a most determined rescuer.

  Driven back by flames and smoke pouring from the building, Horan finally made his way to the road that ran alongside the club’s east wall. There he found the other members of his party. They had gotten out through the bar door, the front door, and a window. All were cut, scorched, and bloody — but they chose not to go to the closest major hospitals, in deference to the more seriously injured, driving instead to a community hospital half an hour away.

  Gary Beineke and his wife, Pam, lived in Sharon, Massachusetts, and had been to The Station several times before. They liked to stand on the raised platform that ran along the club’s south wall, right next to Paul Vanner’s monitor board. That put them close to the band, but off to its left as one faces the stage. On the wall behind them was black-painted egg-crate foam adorned with some type of glitter. Gary had begun absentmindedly picking at its desiccated peaks when Great White came on. He was surprised at how very dry and “skeletal” the foam felt under his touch.

  Gary Beineke was not a late-night person, but he’d tape Dr. Metal’s radio show on WHJY and play it when he worked in his garage. So he was happy to be standing right next to Mike (Dr. Metal) Gonsalves on the south wall platform when Great White took the stage.

  According to Beineke, as soon as he saw the gerbs ignite, his “initial reaction was bad.” As their sparks hit the ceiling and walls, he thought, “everything’s very, very small and tight [for pyro].” Then, when the sparks stopped, Beineke immediately noticed flame on one corner wall of the drummer’s alcove. He watched for “a second or two to see if someone on the stage was gonna hit it with an extinguisher,” but when no one did, he looked to his wife, and her eyes said it all: we’re out of here. Gary and Pam grabbed hold of each other’s jeans and moved as fast as they could down the elevated section along the south wall, toward the main sound board and the opening in the knee-wall separating them from the rest of the club. Paul Vanner raced past them, grabbed a small fire extinguisher from the sound board, and bolted back past them along the platform, toward the stage. Just then, Pam Beineke heard someone shout to Vanner, “It’s too late for that!” The Beinekes made it just past the soundboard when Gary looked back toward the stage. Its entire wall had “turned into just a fireball . . . everything was just glowing orange.”

  Gary figured they had no more than a minute to get out. But progress toward the front door had slowed almost to a stop, with people in front of them moving only a half-step at a time. By this time, smoke had filled the raised ceiling area above the stage and begun to roll across the dropped ceiling covering the rest of the club, descending closer and closer to their heads.

  The front door looked impossible, so Gary and Pam ducked down below the smoke layer and worked their way to the main bar windows. Gary tried kicking one window out with a sneaker-shod foot. It just bounced off. One kick. Two kicks. Three. The glass wouldn’t yield. “The smoke was now getting lower and we were almost on our knees trying to get air. Just then, another man freed a latch securing one of the smaller bar windows, and slid its lower sash up. Gary followed him, diving headfirst out the window, assuming Pam was right behind him. But nothing followed Gary out of that window “but black billowing smoke.” Beineke reached back inside and, working blind, felt someone. He pulled that person through the opening. It was not Pam.

  In his rising terror, Beineke strained to look into the bar through the smoke, where he saw flames roll over the bar’s ceiling, igniting the layer of unburned gaseous fuel there. Silhouetted against that orange glow was a woman. Beineke lunged and grabbed, dragging Pam through the window opening. He propped her up against the wall of the building, between the window she’d just exited and the double picture window next to it. But both could hear loud banging and saw the glass of the picture window bulge outward.

  Just as Gary pulled Pam away from the bulging glass, it shattered, and two people exploded through it onto the concrete below. They were immediately followed by others who landed right on top of them. Several seconds later, “someone on fire” fell out the window they had just exited, onto the ground at their feet. People near them used jackets to try to smother his flames. As the scene at the front of the club became increasingly horrific, Gary and Pam stumbled to their car, with singed hair and scraped limbs.

  The area of the bar windows was the site of selfless heroics on the night of the fire. One beneficiary was Stephanie Simpson. She had passed out from the smoke, just short of the bar windows. She later came to “on fire,” and praying, “Oh God, don’t take me, but if you do, do it quickly.” Suddenly, Simpson felt herself being picked up by her right arm and the back of her pants and tossed through an open window. Someone dragged her to a snow bank and covered her head and face with snow. Stephanie’s next memory was awakening in a hospital bed, with no idea who threw her, or whether that person escaped.

  Another person who escaped through a window, with help, was Katherine Randall. She and her boyfriend had made it as far as the bar windows when flame began to “cruise across the ceiling” and a wall of smoke hit them. She describes a knockdown effect of the smoke that was instantaneous. “There was no breathing. I just went down. It was like passing out.” Randall thought, “I was just gonna go to sleep . . . that’s how I’m going.” Suddenly, she felt herself being “yanked up.” She could see headlights in the parking lot through a window in front of her. Her boyfriend pushed her toward the window, and a woman reached through from outside, grabbed her shoulders, and pulled her out. “The light was behind her, so all I could see was her face,” recalls Randall. “I saw her like she was God.”

  Mike Ricardi, a nineteen-year-old Nichols College student, would also be thankful for his escape from The Station that night. He and his college buddy Jimmy Gahan had interviewed Russell in his tour bus earlier in the evening. Ricardi and Gahan returned to the club around 9:30 and entered on Russell’s “guest list.” They took their places toward the right side of the hall facing the stage, only two rows back from the performers — normally a choice spot. When fire broke out, both turned and pressed toward the front door, but soon got separated in the thick smoke.

  Ricardi dropped beneath the smoke layer and pushed through the choking darkness. When progress toward the front doors stopped completely, Mike despaired of ever escaping — then, he envisioned his late grandfather, a Worcester
, Massachusetts, firefighter who had died in a burning building. He was telling Mike, “I went that way; you’re not going to.” Ricardi was somehow able to crawl around the ticket area into the front of the main bar, where he dove out a broken window.

  Ricardi’s relief and thankfulness for having escaped unhurt were, however, tempered by a profound loss. Just seven days later he was a pallbearer at Jimmy Gahan’s funeral.

  As Jimmy Gahan’s fate proved that night, a spot on Jack Russell’s guest list could be a dubious honor. The Denny’s breakfast gang, led by Rick Sanetti, would find it a mixed blessing. They totaled nine, including Sanetti’s wife, Patty, and niece, Bridget. Patty left the club just before Great White went on. Of the eight remaining, only five would escape the fire.

  The Sanetti party congregated in the main bar area of The Station immediately before the main act. Among them was Katie O’Donnell, Bridget Sanetti’s friend, whom she had brought along for the free night out. Minutes before Great White went on, Katie and Bridget headed for the ladies’ room. When the fire started, they had not yet returned to their group. About fifteen seconds after flames first appeared, Rick Sanetti “believed in his heart right then that the building was going to burn” and tried to gather his party to leave by the closest door — the bar exit. They were headed toward that door when the smoke layer descended in the bar. Sanetti found himself in a crush of choking people trying to fit through one thirty-six-inch door.

  Finally, the crowd burst out the door and deposited him in a stack of people on the steps outside. Sanetti worked himself free of the pile, then ran around the corner of the building where he hoped to find his niece. There, instead, he found broken windows with people tumbling out with hair aflame. He stood beside Shamus Horan and tried to help people through window openings, all the while screaming for Bridget. But neither Bridget nor Katie was seen again.