COVENTRY -- In the darkness of The Station nightclub he could hear glass breaking and people screaming. He placed his hands on the backs of two people in front of him and followed them through the darkness; then they disappeared, and Adam Florio was knocked to the floor.
His glasses fell. For a heartbeat, Florio thought about trying to find them, but he was afraid he'd be trampled if he stayed on the floor. So he stood.
He could not believe how hot the air felt at head height, a searing heat, like standing in front of a fireplace. He inhaled a lung full of this super hot air that smelled of woodsmoke and chemicals; he then felt a dizzy, "dreamy" sensation.
"I felt like I could actually die right here and just go," Florio, 26, of Coventry, recalled yesterday as he stood near the chain-link fence surrounding the charred black pit where the nightclub used to be. The fence was festooned with frost-tinged flowers, photos, prayers and poems. "I thought I couldn't do that because I'd disappoint a lot of people if I just went ahead and died."
Beside Florio at the fire scene yesterday stood his father, George Florio. The father agreed that he might not have been able to bear the loss of his son. His daughter, Rachael Florio, died in the fire. The loss of both of his children -- it was too awful to contemplate.
Adam Florio was released from Kent County Memorial Hospital yesterday morning, and within hours, he stood at the perimeter of the place where his sister had died, the place where he had almost surrendered.
Florio's nose was red and covered with an antiseptic grease; a fat gauze bandage swaddled his head, covering the burn on his forehead and the third-degree burns to his ears. Above the bandage, his hair was singed; the top of his scalp was blistered and coated in a white, antiseptic lotion.
His red nose and the bandages signaled the fact that he was a survivor, and well-wishers filed by to shake his hand, to give him a hug, to hear snippets of his story.
Florio, his sister, and a friend, Greg Grey, entered The Station last Thursday about 10:40 p.m., 20 minutes before the feature act, Great White, began to play. The disc jockey, Michael "The Doctor" Gonsalves, was throwing free T-shirts from the stage. Florio is about 6 feet tall, so he asked his sister and Grey if they'd like to stand in front of him to see better; they said they could see just fine.
Then the lights went down and Great White began to play. The fireworks sparked and ignited the walls. Rachael said, "Come on, Adam, we've got to get out of here." But he lingered; he watched the flames burn for about 10 seconds before he knew for certain that no one was going to douse them. He turned and caught up to the crowd.
Smoke hit the ceiling and shot down. "It was so hot I couldn't believe it," he recalled. That's when he put his hands on people in front of him, felt them disappear into the smoke, then got knocked down.
Through the smoke he heard screams and breaking glass; he walked to his left, stepping over bodies. He spied a dim light and headed for that. The light shone above a shattered window.
"I leaned out" the window, Florio recalled. There were people unconscious or dead wedged in the window frame. He pushed himself between those people, then he fell onto a concrete ramp. Florio flopped over a rail onto the ground and looked back. Flames snapped through the window seconds after his escape. His ears hurt, and his head felt hot.
Florio wandered through the parking lot, bloodstained and covered with soot, trying to call his sister's name: "Rachael! Rachael!" His throat was parched, his voice weak. Someone gave him snow to eat and to pack on his ears. A TV news crew filmed him patting his head; his mother, Christine, saw him on the news and telephoned George that their son was all right.
George Florio arrived at the fire while the flames still burned high. He had heard that Adam was out, but he knew in his heart that his daughter had died. "I knew that her energy was not there," he said.
After his release from the hospital yesterday, Adam wanted to return to the place where his sister had died; at first his father wasn't sure that was a good idea, but he relented.
"I didn't want him to feel sort of abandoned, that he had been through a trauma and no one cared," George said as people gathered around his son. "The tragedy is so enormous. There's so many families affected. I didn't want him to feel not a part of that special family that he now belongs to."
About 20 feet away, Darlene "Dee Dee" Anglin struggled to clip a balloon and a banner to the chain-link fence. She wasn't close to any one of the 96 who died in the fire, but she wanted to memorialize them.
"Just to me, everybody here was family, you know?" Anglin said, as she smoothed the banner, a frayed state flag bearing the seal of an anchor and the one word: Hope.
