Efforts are now being directed to assist those who were injured but survived the blaze.

07/15/2003

BY TOM MOONEY
Journal Staff Writer

Each month the committee that oversees The Station Nightclub Fire Relief Fund discusses how best to disburse donations, now approaching $3 million. As time passes, those conversations are changing.

Talk once centered on paying the costs of funerals for the 100 people who died in the Feb. 20 fire and helping their families cope with mortgages and utility and car bills.

Now the committee's focus is turning to the more than 200 people injured, many seriously, and their long roads to recovery, some just beginning.

"We're getting a lot more requests related to long-term burn victims," said the Rev. John E. Holt, chairman of The Station fund's coordinating committee. "This is not going away in a hurry."

Among those requests: air conditioners to cool injured bodies and mental health counseling for hurting hearts and minds.

The committee, Holt said, recently approved providing each fire victim with up to 24 consultations with a mental health-care professional -- over and above any insurance coverage.

And the committee plans to contract with The Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors Inc., a nonprofit agency based in Michigan that provides peer support, education and advocacy for fire victims.

Amy Acton, executive director of The Phoenix Society and a burn survivor, said she plans to visit Rhode Island in September or October to help organize a support system for local burn victims.

Emotional recovery from burns usually begins only after extensive physical rehabilitation is under way, Acton said. "People then are ready to deal with some of the emotional impact. They become a little more interested in getting help in that area."

But it can take time for people to reach that place.

"Some people may not reach for help for another year or two," she said. "It is really one thing we stress. This is just beginning."

"We'll come down [to Rhode Island] for a day with a couple of specialists in grief and loss trauma to work within the mental-health community, so those who are caring [for The Station survivors] can have more burn-specific information, and show them how to be more helpful to their clients."

The Phoenix Society will also host, at a later time, a gathering of burn survivors, their families and caregivers to discuss resources and set up peer training groups.

The gathering will be a mini version of the group's annual "World Burn Congress" which, Acton said, often provides burn survivors their first opportunity to meet and share common concerns with other burn survivors and medical care professionals.

"If you connect people with others who are farther down the road [to recovery], it gives them the sense of hope that this isn't the end of the world as they know it," she said.

The Station Nightclub Fire Relief Fund has received nearly $3 million in donations through the United Way of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Foundation.

One-third of the money has been disbursed for "short-term" expenses such as housing, daycare, basic needs and a financial bridge until disability insurance kicks in. The fund will continue disbursing money for those needs throughout the year, Holt said.

"I don't know how, really, to define 'short-term,' " he said. "We're only four months into this, which really isn't that long a time when you think about it."

The fund committee has set rough guidelines for how much money each victim or family may receive to assure fair disbursal, Holt said. For that reason the fund has had to deny requests to reimburse medical bills.

The medical bills of only two or three severely burned victims would easily wipe out the remaining $2 million in the fund, Holt said.

"It's not that we don't want to spend the money, because I assure you we will spend every penny we take in," Holt said. "It's a question of equity."

Holt said the fund will pay for representatives of The Phoenix Society to help train some of the local burn victims to become peer counselors and start local survivor groups.

"I'm overjoyed," Holt said, "that we have found people with the expertise to help us shape the future of this thing." There is "no other place in the country that is dealing with burn victims on a level we are today."

The Providence social service agency, Family Services Inc., which has a contract with the fund to manage the cases of the fire victims, still receives between 20 and 30 phone calls a day from people seeking help.

"We're just going to keep going," Holt said, "until the phone stops ringing."