State officials yesterday revealed the names of 21 more victims of The Station nightclub fire, leaving just 7 of the 97 killed in the fire to be named.
Four bodies recovered from last Thursday's fire in West Warwick still have not been identified. Three names are being withheld so relatives can be notified.
As the many wakes and funerals began, mourners remembered the lives and talents of those lost. The names revealed yesterday included two very different artists.
Eighteen-year-old Nicholas O'Neill, of Pawtucket, was a songwriter. He had written at least 50, and dreamed of making it as a musician.
Skott C. Greene's art lives on, literally, on the bodies of the customers of his tattoo parlor. The body artist from Warwick died two days before his 36th birthday, in a fire started by onstage pyrotechnics used by the hard-rock band Great White.
Governor Carcieri said identifying the last four is "just more problematic. The good news is we've gotten 93 of them positively identified. Those victims have been returned to those families."
The final identifications may take days or weeks, Carcieri said. Although the medical examiner is confident the remaining identifications can be made without DNA testing, state officials will begin collecting items that could provide DNA, the governor said.
"If we don't need it, then we don't need it," he said. "If we need it, we're actually doing [the tests], so instead of going sequentially and losing more time, we going to try to do that in parallel. It's a little more costly to do that, but if it brings this to a resolution faster . . . it's in my judgment worth doing."
State officials will ask the families for "items of a personal nature that would contain some samples of the DNA that they could use to compare" with DNA from the unidentified bodies. "It could be a hairbrush, could be a toothbrush, any number of things, just to get samples," Carcieri said.
Families of the victims had been gathering at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Warwick since the fire. That operation is closed, and the families of the four unidentified bodies have gone home, the governor said.
"We've assigned to every one of those families a person from the Department of Health that will be their direct liaison" to the medical examiner and to state government, Carcieri said.
The grief counseling and other services offered at the Crowne Plaza are now being offered from a new resource center on Route 2 in West Warwick.
STATE POLICE dogs from Connecticut swept the fire site Tuesday, looking for another victim after authorities were unable to account for why they had one more missing person report than they did bodies.
The dogs finished sweeping that site late in the evening, Carcieri said. "Other than some personal effects that were uncovered and collected, we found no other victims," he said. "We believe and hope and pray there are no other victims."
Police appeared to have reconciled the extra missing person with the arrest of a West Warwick man who was charged with filing a false report.
Jeremy J. Howell, 25, of 1642 1/2 Main St., West Warwick, allegedly told West Warwick police that his girlfriend went to see Great White at The Station and was missing.
He then used family relief services to obtain a hotel room for Friday night, valued at $129, a cellular phone, valued at $100, and some food, the police said.
"It's very upsetting," Carcieri said. That report "got us turned upside down" trying to determine if another person was missing. "Obviously we're all angry."
THE NAMES revealed yesterday are:
Stacie Angers, 29, of Worcester,
Mary H. Baker, 32, of Fall River,
William Christopher Bonardi, 36, of Lincoln,
Robert Croteau, 31, of Fall River,
Kevin J. Dunn, 37, of Attleboro,
Mark A. Fontaine, 22, of Johnston,
Michael Fresolo, 32, of Worcester,
Charline Elaine Gingras-Fick, 35, of Pawtucket,
Derek Gray, 22, of Dracut, Mass.,
Skott C. Greene, 35, of Warwick,
Derek Brian Johnson, 32, of West Warwick,
Michael Joseph Kulz, 30, of Warwick,
Steven Mancini, 39, of Johnston,
Thomas Marion Jr., 27, Westport, Mass.,
Jeffery Martin, 33, of Melrose, Mass.,
Kristen McQuarrie, 37, of Coventry,
Leigh Ann Moreau, 21, of Providence,
Ryan Morin, 31, of Boston,
Nicholas O'Neill, 18, of Pawtucket,
Matthew James Pickett, 23, of Bellingham,
Sarah Jane Telgarsky, 37, of Plainfield, Conn.
CARCIERI SAID that donations pledged to the Station Nightclub Fire Relief Fund have topped $400,000. The fund, administered by the United Way of Rhode Island, is the central collection point for fundraising for people affected by the fire.
Major contributors include: Malcolm and Elizabeth Chace, GTECH, Nortek Holdings, , Artemis and Martha Joukowsky, Fleet Bank, Textron, , Factory Mutual Insurance Co., and The Providence Journal. The fund received one anonymous donation of $50,000.
Owners of the Charlesmark Hotel in Boston decided to open their doors to families of fire victims at the Mass General Hospital.
"We just felt that we could help out," said co-owner Mark Hagopian. "It was a tragic time for everybody . . . We just felt that some of the families might not be prepared for extra expenses like that."
Several families have come and gone; two families are now staying at the 33-room modern boutique hotel, at 655 Boylston St. in Copley Square. Hagopian said families who need accommodations can call the hotel at 617-247-1212.
THE NATIONAL Fire Protection Association, which sets the standards incorporated in fire codes, announced yesterday that it was calling on a 30-person technical committee to meet as soon as possible to review safety problems highlighted by the West Warwick fire and a fatal stampede at a Chicago nightclub a few days earlier.
Also yesterday, The Rhode Island Senate yesterday passed a pair of resolutions expressing its sorrow over the fire and trying to prevent such a disaster from happening again.
One resolution extends the senators' prayers and sympathy to the victims and their families, and their appreciation for the work of fire, police and rescuers and others for saving lives and for helping the survivors. It describes the tragedy as "the darkest day in Rhode Island history."
The other resolution calls for establishing a 16-member commission, with representatives from the Senate and House, the Carcieri administration and several state agencies. The commission would investigate pyrotechnic displays, sprinkler systems and other fire-protection devices, nightclub exits and evacuation plans. It would report back to the General Assembly by May 1 with recommendations for changes to prevent a recurrence of the fire.
With staff reports from Bruce Landis, Scott Mayerowitz, Peter B. Lord and Karen Lee Ziner.
Get the latest news developments on the fire, browse an online memorial to its victims, and talk about the blaze and its impact, at:
http://projo.com
