Digital Extra: The Station Fire

Titan Corp. says the lack of cooperation by the attorney general "delayed and frustrated" its investigation, but that it was eventually able to get access.

09:01 AM EDT on Wednesday, July 14, 2004

BY PAUL EDWARD PARKER
Journal Staff Writer

Journal photo / Mary Murphy Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch speaks to the media gathered in the Cranston armory days after the Station nightclub fire.

While some state agencies are criticized head-on in the Station fire report made public yesterday, the attorney general's office takes glancing blows over its unwillingness, according to the report's authors, to share information with outside agencies.

The report, by Titan Corp., faulted the attorney general's office for holding up a long-term study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the health effects of the fire on survivors.

"The unique nature of this incident, which involved mass casualties and mass fatalities, presents an opportunity for important research projects by government and private researchers," the report says.

Deputy Attorney General Gerald J. Coyne yesterday said that the CDC approached the attorney general's office less than a month after the fire. "They wanted access from us to who all the people were who were at the club," Coyne said. "It was too soon after the fire. We didn't even know who the victims were yet ourselves."

The report also criticized the attorney general for temporarily blocking interviews with police, fire department and medical examiner's office personnel who responded to the fire.

"Overall, it delayed and frustrated, but we were eventually able to get that access," Grant C. Peterson, a Titan vice president, said at a State House news conference yesterday.

Coyne said yesterday his office was concerned Titan was promising confidentiality to the people it interviewed, something Coyne said is not allowed under Rhode Island law. Coyne said his office and lawyers connected to the Titan study worked through the summer last year, agreeing on Oct. 24 on a procedure for the interviews. "Their concerns were not about the criminal investigation. Ours were," said Coyne.