PROVIDENCE -- West Warwick department heads yesterday produced a raft of subpoenaed documents to a lawyer representing victims of The Station nightclub fire. But on order of the attorney general's office, the town officials withheld all investigative reports concerning the fire that were produced by the town's Fire and Police Departments.
Max Wistow, an interim lead counsel for those who were killed or injured in the fire, said he will try to work out something with the office of Atty. Gen. Patrick C. Lynch to get the withheld records. But if prosecutors continue to balk at the release of municipal reports relating to the fire's investigation, Wistow said, he would attempt to get a court order from Judge Alice B. Gibney forcing the release of the requested material. Gibney has been appointed to manage pretrial proceedings in Superior Court civil cases brought by fire victims and their families.
"Our hope is that because of the public interest involved in this thing -- 100 families lost loved ones and 150 or more were injured -- that the attorney general will make every effort to get this information out unless it seriously compromises their criminal investigation" into the fire, Wistow said yesterday.
Wistow said he has already contacted Lynch's office in an effort to obtain other reports that he said he and victims' families have been unable to access to date -- autopsy reports of the people who died in the fire and toxicology reports done on the deceased.
He says he hasn't gotten a response.
One hundred people died in the Feb. 20 fire and more than 200 others were injured when pyrotechnics set off by the rock band Great White ignited highly flammable packing foam that had been installed by the club's owners as soundproofing.
Thus far, only five lawsuits have been filed by victims and their families. One is pending in Superior Court, Providence; three in federal court, Providence; and one in U.S. District Court in Hartford, Conn.
Wistow and a group of Rhode Island lawyers say they are holding off filing their lawsuits until they conduct a thorough investigation and get results of tests that have yet to be performed on materials collected from the charred ruins of the former nightclub. More than 700 pieces of evidence were hauled from the site by civil investigators.
