Two days after Christmas in 1999, Fire Marshal Denis P. Larocque set out
to determine how many people should be allowed inside The Station
nightclub.
Town officials had been getting complaints from neighbors, and nearly
nine years had passed since anyone had reviewed the limit.
In the meantime, the place had been remodeled, so Larocque started from
scratch, tape measure in hand. The club's dimensions filled pages of
notes. His conclusion: only 317 people could be inside at once.
About two months later, Larocque visited the club again, revising his
own numbers and raising the capacity to 404.
In part, the larger figure reflected the prospective owners' pledge to
remove some furniture during big shows.
But most of the increase came because Larocque reclassified all public
areas of the club as "standing room" -- the category allowing the most
people. Less than 10 weeks earlier, he had put the same rooms in more
restrictive categories.
In an interview, William F. Howe, the chief of inspections for the state
fire marshal's office, would not discuss The Station, but he said that
in general, the state fire code does not allow an entire building to be
classified as standing room.
Larocque's revised numbers allowed prospective club owners Jeffrey and
Michael Derderian to admit 87 more people without expanding the club's
public areas.
The revision came on the same day that the Derderians met at the
nightclub with Larocque, club owner Howard J. Julian, and high-ranking
town officials, according to town documents.
After a pyrotechnics display ignited the club during a rock show in
February, killing 100 people and injuring more than 200, Governor
Carcieri estimated that around 350 people had been inside. Many of those
killed were barred from escape when a press of bodies piled up at the
main doors, blocking a key exit.
Now lawyers working for the victims of the fire are scrutinizing the
club's capacity. "That's important on several levels," said Max Wistow,
one of the lawyers. "One, was there a violation on that evening? And
two, was the town's methodology correct in the first place?"
HOWE, the inspections chief, said the fire code's standing-room
provision is intended for use in limited areas of a building, such as a
restaurant lobby or a ticket line, where patrons gather temporarily and
where they remain near exit doors. Standing room is the densest
floor-space category in the fire code.
He said that a large group of people packed so close together risks
reaching a "jamming point," when people bump into each other and form
bottlenecks.
Larocque's notes show that he classified all areas of The Station open
to patrons -- more than 2,500 square feet -- as standing room, including
the dance floor, the pool room, the bars and the lounge areas.
The code requires seven square feet per person on a dance floor that is
free of all tables and chairs; it requires only five square feet per
person, plus aisle space, for standing room.
Howe, an inspector for the state fire marshal's office since its
inception in 1974, said he's never heard of an entire place of assembly
classified as standing room.
Neither has Thomas B. Coffey Jr., executive director of the state Fire
Safety Code Board of Appeal and Review. The board, he said, has never
been asked to determine whether the standing-room formula could be
applied to an entire building.
"I HONESTLY don't know why" Larocque reclassified the space, Joseph J.
Rodio, a lawyer for Larocque and other members of the West Warwick
firefighters union, said late last week.
"If I'd represented the Derderians, I would have made the argument that
you could use five [feet per person], but does that make it right? The
owner could make a good argument that it should."
Larocque was working with an "open-ended" code book with room for
different interpretations, Rodio said. Generally, he said, Larocque and
other inspectors try to demand as many safety improvements as they can
under the law, and business owners try to persuade them to relax their
demands.
The Derderians, through lawyer Jeffrey B. Pine, denied they ever asked
for the standing-room classification.
Town Manager Wolfgang Bauer said that Larocque, fire marshal since 1998,
"is very cautious. If he did that, he did that for a purpose that had
very concrete and sound principles behind them. He didn't do it on a
whim."
On the advice of his lawyers, Larocque declined an invitation to comment
on The Journal's interpretation of his notes. He left a phone message
saying something was "not accurate." But attempts to obtain an
explanation failed.
THE MARCH 2, 2000, decision was the last of at least five determinations
of the club's capacity since it was built in 1946.
"The Building should not be occupied by more than Fifty people," Fire
Inspector James Hudson wrote in a letter to the owner of the building,
then called the Red Fox Inn, in November 1969. In a separate letter,
Building Inspector Edward P. Flanagan wrote the same thing.
As the building took on new owners, new uses and new names, other
inspectors increased its capacity at least four times. The club stayed
roughly the same size, according to town documents.
State law tells fire inspectors how to calculate a nightclub's maximum
occupancy. First, they should measure the interior floor space open to
the public. Second, they should divide that figure by a number that
corresponds to the way the space is being used. For example, a banquet
hall packed with tables and chairs is allowed about half as many people
as a dance floor the same size.
IN 1981, after a small grease fire in the kitchen of what was then P.
Brillo & Sons, an Italian restaurant, fire inspector Don A. Centracchio
measured the interior and wrote "your total occupancy load for this
building is 161."
In 1991, a Providence businessman, Nicholas R. DeStefano, sought to open
a sports bar to be called Crackerjacks in the then-vacant building. When
he applied for a liquor license, Fire Capt. Robert E. Kelley set the
capacity at 225 patrons.
It was in 1999 that Larocque first calculated the club's capacity.
Responding to complaints from neighbors and town councilmen about the
crowds at The Station, the police chief and the town engineer asked the
Fire Department to take a look.
Larocque visited the club on Dec. 27, measuring each room. His notes
indicate that he found room for 314 people. In a memorandum written
three days later, he told the police chief that the maximum occupancy
would be slightly higher, 317. His notes don't say why.
Meanwhile, the Derderians were arranging to buy The Station from Howard
J. Julian. The takeover required the transfer of a liquor license and
the granting of an entertainment license. Town officials then had the
opportunity to make demands of the new owners to alleviate neighbors'
concerns about parking, noise and other problems.
Town documents refer to several meetings among town officials and club
owners. A large one, characterized in a document as a "follow-up"
meeting, took place at 10 a.m. on Thursday, March 2, 2000. It was
attended by the Derderians, Julian, Larocque, the police and fire
chiefs, a police major, the building official, and the minimum housing
inspector, the document says.
That same day, Larocque wrote a memo to the police chief: "Upon review
of proposed changes by prospective new owners of the Filling Station,
the capacity of the building will be allowed to increase."
He explained that the Derderians agreed to remove a video machine, a
cigarette machine, and tables and chairs from the front bar "during some
of their bigger shows."
Other documents indicate that removing tables and chairs made only part
of the difference. According to Larocque's notes, he found 2,519 usable
square feet of space in the club -- enough for "359.5" people if he
allowed one person every seven square feet.
In a separate calculation, Larocque reclassified the club's interior as
standing room and divided the area by five square feet.
The fire code requires that aisle space be subtracted from the area of
any standing room. On a freehand floor plan, Larocque plotted 498 square
feet of aisle space snaking through the rooms of the club. That left
2,021 square feet for standing room, enough for 404 people.
Even though Larocque mapped where the aisles should be situated, his
notes do not say whether the Derderians would be required to keep the
"aisles" clear of people during concerts -- or whether he told the
Derderians about the aisle requirements.
Pine, the Derderians' lawyer, said recently that the aisle requirements
did not "ring any bells."
"They didn't have any memory of any discussion regarding that map or
aisle space," Pine added.
The Derderians were told the club had a crowd limit of over 400, Pine
said, and he asserted that the crowd was well within that limit the
night of the fire. "From my perspective that's the most important
point," he said.
After the fire, investigators found a contract with the rock band Great
White stating that the club could admit up to 550 people.
Larocque set two conditions on the limit of 404, according to his memo
to the police. The number was contingent upon "all tables and chairs"
being "removed from all areas," and having a "uniformed firefighter" on
duty, he wrote.
The Derderians have denied that they were told about those conditions.
On the night of the fire, they hired a police officer, but not a
firefighter. A video taken before the fire shows people using chairs and
stools in the front bar.
DIGITAL EXTRA: Look back at coverage of The Station fire and its
aftermath, view more informational graphics about the fire, and more at:
http://projo.com/extra/2003/stationfire/
