PROVIDENCE -- Death certificates issued for the victims of the
Station nightclub fire show that most of the men and women who perished
in the blaze died not from burns but primarily from inhaling "products
of combustion" and from their inability to breathe in the "super-heated
oxygen-depleted atmosphere."
In the weeks since the Feb. 20 West Warwick fire, reporters for The
Providence Journal have been able to determine the cause of death of 57
of the 100 people who died as a result of the nightclub blaze, finding
the information on death certificates for many of the victims and
interviewing family members of the deceased who obtained death
certificates from the state medical examiner's office.
Of the 57 victims, 55 died from smoke inhalation, the death certificates
show. The remaining two list asphyxiation, and don't indicate whether it
resulted from smoke inhalation or other causes.
A victim's gender, height, weight and age apparently played no role in
the cause of death, based on the death certificates obtained by The
Journal and information from the victims' families.
Whether someone weighed 130 or 230 pounds, the fast-moving fire with
heavy black smoke blinded, choked and killed indiscriminately, the death
certificates show.
Burns were mentioned in 31 of the 57 deaths, according to the death
certificates and the victims' families. However, several of the death
certificates showed thermal burning occurred after death and the main
cause of death was inhalation of toxic smoke.
"Nobody burned to death," Providence lawyer Max Wistow, a
court-appointed interim lead counsel for the fire victims, said in an
interview yesterday. "Every one of the death certificates we have seen
showed that the primary cause of death was inhalation of noxious gases."
Based on the death certificates, he said, civil lawyers investigating
the fire for the victims are focusing their investigation on the
manufacturers of some of the plastic materials that were inside the
nightclub "who are potentially responsible for the deaths of these
people."
Michael and Jeffrey Derderian, the owners of The Station, installed
hundreds of square feet of highly flammable polyurethane foam on the
nightclub walls and ceiling as an acoustic barrier. A videotape shot by
Channel 12 at the club the night it burned down shows fire, ignited by a
pyrotechnic display, spreading rapidly along the foam.
When the foam burns, cyanide gas is just one of the toxic gases it gives
off, according to fire experts interviewed by The Journal.
Says Wistow: "When burned, polyurethane gives off hydrogen cyanide, a
gas which they use in gas chambers, killing people. Toxic gases knock
you out very quickly. Even if they don't kill you right away, they
disable you instantly and knock you down, leaving you unable to escape."
In addition, he said, "fire eats up oxygen and can use up all of the
oxygen in a room even if windows are open."
"Unfortunately," said Wistow, he and the other lawyers working for the
victims and their families have not yet been informed by the attorney
general's office exactly where in the nightclub each of the bodies was
found.
But Mark Mandell, who with Wistow is interim lead counsel for the fire
victims, says he is "hopeful" that state prosecutors, who are conducting
a criminal investigation into the fire, will soon share that information
with the civil lawyers.
Mandell said that autopsies of the victims -- the results of which he
said have not yet been turned over to the lawyers -- will provide much
more detailed information to help determine which manufacturers should
be sued in connection with the fire.
"The death certificates are a general statement," Mandell said. "The
additional proof is in the autopsies."
"We need to wait on the autopsies to get a clear, definitive study to
show what caused people to die," he said. Autopsy reports on the fire
victims will include toxicology studies of a person's blood and organs.
Through an autopsy, one can determine exactly what chemicals are in
someone's body, and whether hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide and other
noxious gases are present and to what degree, Mandell said. The
toxicology reports will also show how much, if any, alcohol had been
consumed by the person prior to death.
They will also detail the amount and severity of a deceased's burns,
Mandell said. "If someone had 80 percent carbon monoxide in their body,
we would want to find those products in the vicinity of where the person
was that contain carbon," Mandell said.
Among the key questions lawyers for fire victims are looking at now is:
Who manufactured the foam -- which was sold to the Derderians by
American Foam of Johnston -- and was the foam properly labeled for fire
hazards when it was sold?
Wistow said that the lawyers are also looking at other products in the
nightclub -- such as plastics used in furniture coverings and the
insulation inside the wood-frame building.
Mandell said the lawyers are investigating the adhesives used inside the
nightclub, the carpeting that covered the walls and the floor, the "Luan
wood paneling" (a laminated product) inside The Station, the ceiling
tiles, wiring and plastic light diffusers.
"There were all sorts of hydrocarbon-based materials at the place,
mostly plastics, throughout the building," said Wistow. "We know they
give off very nasty gases."
Mandell said that the lawyers won't just be looking at the components of
materials in the nightclub but also "the unnatural rate of speed" at
which the fire swept through the place.
He said that the Channel 12 videotape shows that it took just over five
minutes from the time the fire began to the point where "there was a
major flashover inside the club." Flashover occurs when the ambient
temperature of an enclosure rises to the point where everything in it
combusts. He said that several clients represented by him and Wistow
have told him that they were burned -- some lost hands, ears and all of
the flesh on their scalp, he said -- from "hot, molten materials
dripping on them."
"They've told us horrible stories of how they were there struggling to
escape and suddenly a thick black cloud of smoke envelopes them and they
start to lose consciousness. They say they felt like they were going to
die but that somehow they forced themselves to jump out of a window, or
were pulled by someone from the bottom of a pile of people who were
clogging the doorway."
Smoke inhalation is the leading cause of death in fires, Dr. John Hall,
of the National Fire Protection Association in Quincy, Mass., told The
Journal in an interview in the weeks just after the fire. The
association investigates fires and writes national fire and safety codes.
"Typically, in the United States, the fraction of what we loosely call
smoke inhalation versus burns is between 2 to 1 and 3 to 1," said Hall.
"The smoke inhalation share has been growing. Luckily, the total number
is declining."
Smoke inhalation means you have taken in one or more toxic gases by
inhaling. Said Hall: "Most of what you're taking in that's harmful is
carbon monoxide. Your blood is chemically more inclined to bond with
carbon monoxide than oxygen. Quite a bit more. If you put carbon
monoxide in there, you are poisoning the tissues and removing oxygen."
Fire deaths are also caused by toxic gases given off by burning
furniture or other furnishings, Hall said.
"It's often a race between suffocating for lack of oxygen and direct
killing of cells by poisoning," Hall said. "Most people don't burn to
death.
"In a fire that moves very quickly, every effect is important," he said.
"All the toxic gases, the deprivation of oxygen. In a fast-moving fire,
it becomes almost academic to ask which killed you first, or most.
Everything is involved. That's why the most important issue in fire
hazard is how much is burning and how fast."
With computer-assisted reporting by Paul Edward Parker
