Digital Extra: The Station Fire

12:35 PM EST on Thursday, March 3, 2005

By JACK PERRY
projo.com staff writer

PROVIDENCE -- In the hope of preventing another tragedy like The Station nightclub fire, a federal agency today recommended the installation of sprinklers in all nightclubs, tighter restrictions on the use of flammable materials and better exits so people can get out of buildings during emergencies.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has spent two years studying the Feb. 20, 2003, fire that killed 100 people and injured about 200. This morning, the agency released a draft report including 12 recommendations to improve the fire safety of nightclubs nationwide.

Other recommendations from the $500,000 study address emergency preparedness and response practice and call for more research to better understand how people react in emergencies such as fires, according to a NIST press release on the report.

Agency representatives were addressing reporters at 11 a.m. at the Providence Marriott. In a separate session, they were to discuss the report with people injured in the West Warwick blaze and family members of those killed.

A subdivision of the agency, called the National Construction Safety Team, examined why the fire started by the rock band Great White's indoor fireworks display spread so quickly through the wooden building and why more people were not able to get out.

The report does not assign blame for the fire that engulfed the West Warwick club. The agency has said its goal is to "recommend improvements in the way people design, construct, maintain and use buildings to increase both occupant safety and structural integrity."

The agency does not have the authority to change codes. That's up to states, cities and towns.

According to the press release, the following three factors played a primary role in the tragedy: the hazardous mix of building contents, an inability to suppress the fire early and exits that couldn't accommodate the large group of people trying to get out in a short time.

In its examination, the team has built a replica of the nightclub's stage area, which was covered with flammable packaging foam used as soundproofing. The team conducted test burns of the replica, with and without sprinklers in place, to see how installing sprinklers would have changed what happened at The Station.

The report notes that within 90 seconds temperatures and gases at the nightclub platform and dance floor were too hot to survive and that crowding at the main entrance hampered people's ability to get out of the building. About two-thirds of the nightclub's occupants tried getting out through that door.

Many of the issues mentioned in the report have been raised by those examining the tragic fire. After the fire, the state legislature convened a commission to study Rhode Island's fire laws and write a new code, which the General Assembly passed within five months.

For example, Rhode Island nightclubs with maximum occupancies of more than 300 patrons must install sprinklers by July 1. Smaller clubs, from 150 to 300 patrons, must install sprinklers by July of next year.

Other states also made changes in their codes in the fire's wake.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology report makes the following recommendations:

-- requiring sprinkler systems in all existing nightclubs regardless of size. (The Station did not have a sprinkler system.)

-- tightening restrictions on the use of flammable materials and further limiting the use of pyrotechnics.

-- improving exits to allow people to get out faster.

-- eliminating the practice of "grandfathering" older nightclubs from new or revised safety regulations.

-- requiring redundancy in passive and active fire protection systems.

-- considering information from past building failures when analyzing proposed changes to model codes.

-- increasing the number of portable fire extinguishers.

-- improving fire inspection systems

-- ensuring that fire departments meet standards for staffing, equipment, communications systems and major incident operating procedures.

-- conducting research to better understand human behavior in such emergencies.

-- more research to better understand how fire spreads and how to suppress it.

-- conducting research to develop and refine computer model and computer-aided decision tools with which communities can make cost-effective choices about code changes, fire safety technologies and emergency resource allocations.

The report, nearly 600 pages broken into five sections, is a draft of the agency's final report, subject to public comment.

The public will have until April 4 to comment before the draft becomes the finished report.

At the same time as the media briefing, NIST posted its full report on its Web site, at: www.nist.gov/ncst/