Digital Extra: The Station Fire

Some police and fire records should be made public, but others should stay secret, Judge Mark A. Pfeiffer decides.

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, July 23, 2004

BY MARK ARSENAULT
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- One fire marshal's report and certain police and fire calls related to The Station nightclub fire should be made public, but other recorded calls and hundreds of pages of government documents should remain secret, a Superior Court judge has ruled.

The Providence Journal had filed suit seeking the records.

Judge Mark A. Pfeiffer issued his ruling yesterday, after reviewing the records over the past three months.

About 165 police and fire department calls recorded during the nightclub fire, and a one-page report describing where 96 bodies were recovered in the wreckage, must be released, Pfeiffer decided.

But the judge denied public access to recorded 911 emergency calls, and calls from fire victims and relatives. Also to remain secret are the names of people at the club who later applied for benefits, and more than 600 pages of police documents.

The Journal is considering an appeal, said Executive Editor Joel P. Rawson.

The judge's 10-page ruling groups the records into categories:

West Warwick police communications.

The recordings include 911 emergency calls; calls from fire victims or family members of people who may have been at The Station; calls from private citizens; one call from a first-responder to the disaster and one from an off-duty police officer. Pfeiffer ruled that the 911 and family calls "are intensely personal and are intimately intertwined with The Station fire tragedy as it was unfolding." Those calls are to be kept secret, he wrote.

The other calls should be released, he wrote.

West Warwick fire communications.

As with the police calls, the judge ruled that 911 and family calls are secret; others are public.

A list, maintained by Governor Carcieri's administration, of people who sought public assistance from the Station Fire Family Resource Center. The Journal wanted only the names of people who were at the club, as part of the paper's effort to determine how many people were in The Station when it caught fire.

Pfeiffer ruled that the list should be secret because "these records are identifiable to individual applicants for benefits," and therefore not public.

A one-page document created by the fire marshal's office that shows where 96 bodies were recovered at The Station. It does not identify specific victims. This document should be released, the judge ruled.

Police reports. These include incident reports, police narratives, an evidence log, a search warrant inventory and more than 400 pages of witness statements -- none of which is public, the judge ruled. "Disclosure of these records necessarily would interfere with the criminal prosecutions now pending and arguably could impact the 'fair trial' rights of those charged with crimes," Pfeiffer wrote.