Digital Extra: The Station Fire

Fire safety changes are months behind schedule, but Fire Marshal Irving J. Owens says Rhode Island is still safer today than it was before The Station nightclub tragedy.

01:25 AM EDT on Sunday, September 26, 2004

BY MARK ARSENAULT
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Eighteen months after The Station nightclub disaster, state officials don't know how many Rhode Island nightclubs have put in the sprinkler systems required by law.

With the July 1, 2005, deadline for many clubs to install sprinklers nine months away, nobody knows how many nightclubs are currently working to put in sprinklers, a centerpiece of safety requirements inspired by the West Warwick nightclub fire that killed 100 people.

Nobody knows how many clubs must have them.

A manager of a major sprinkler company says his firm has installed a dozen sprinkler systems, but he believes the majority of places have not complied, due in part to confusion about the new laws.

Two key enforcement provisions authorized by the 2003 fire code are also not yet in place:

The fire code ticketing system -- established by the General Assembly so that inspectors could write citations similar to traffic tickets -- is still being designed.

And the state fire marshal's office has not yet started spot checks of places of public assembly at peak hours, to ensure that Rhode Island's nightclubs are safe at night, when they are full of people.

Journal photo / John Freidah Delays in implementing new laws are inevitable, says Owens, whose future as the state's top fire official is in the hands of Governor Carcieri.

Fire Marshal Irving J. Owens says his office is working on a ticketing system and night inspections, and both should be in place soon. But Owens predicted in January that ticketing could start in February, and suggested in April that night inspections could start in June.

Delays, he said, have been unavoidable.

"Would I like to see it done quicker? Yeah," Owens said in a recent interview. "But we went through a process. We've had a tremendous amount of law passed. We've had a limited amount of people."

Owens insists that Rhode Island is safer now than before The Station fire. He has hired six new inspectors in his office. Inspectors across the state have had training classes on enforcing the state's new fire code. The new law eliminated outdated safety exemptions for older buildings. The fire marshal's office in the past two weeks has conducted fire-safety classes for people who work in places of public assembly.

"It's my opinion that the state is safer," Owens said. "I can't say by what degree, but I have never seen so many people so cognizant of fire safety. We need to continue that. Like a lot of things, people after a while put it aside."

It's his job to remind Rhode Island to be vigilant about fire safety, through public speaking and the press, he said. "It's my obligation and I want to step up."

He is overseeing Rhode Island's new emphasis on fire safety through his own professional uncertainty. Owens' five-year appointment as state fire marshal ran out in July. One of Owens' employees, Deputy Fire Marshal Anthony Marsella, is openly seeking the marshal's job.

Under the law, Owens can continue in the position until Governor Carcieri reappoints him or appoints somebody else. Any appointment must be confirmed by the state Senate.

Asked whether he will reappoint Owens, the governor said last week: "I don't know yet. We haven't dealt with it. I'm not saying I am -- I not saying either way. . . . I just haven't dealt with it yet."

He noted that the Senate is not in session and no pick for fire marshal can be confirmed until the General Assembly returns in January.

Is he satisfied with the job his fire marshal has done?

"I think that there's a lot on his plate right now," Carcieri said in an interview last week. "In the aftermath of the fire, and all of that, I think that the fire marshal did a good job in reacting to that and what had to be done.

"We're in a different phase now. We've got a whole new set of regulations. We've added staff [in the marshal's office], and we're trying to support that effort, but a lot has to be done. I haven't sat down to review it."

THE FIRE SAFETY laws passed by the General Assembly after The Station fire in 2003 established new requirements, including sprinklers, for places of public assembly. Nightclubs with maximum occupancies between 150 and 300 people have until July 1, 2006, to install sprinklers. Larger places of assembly are to install sprinklers by July.

In the 2004 session, the legislature added flexibility to the hard deadlines, giving the Fire Safety Code Board of Appeal and Review the authority to push the sprinkler deadlines as far back as 2008.

So far, the deadlines have not moved, said Tom Coffey, the board's director.

Carcieri was adamant during the drafting of the fire codes that the law require sprinklers in "a reasonable but expeditious timeframe." He wants the deadlines to stay firm.

He did not oppose granting the fire board authority over deadlines "to allow some flexibility," but says extensions should not be easy to get. "I won't be satisfied personally if what we see is a lot of people coming in for extensions."

The governor said he is concerned about the lack of data on Rhode Island clubs that need sprinklers, and the progress toward compliance. "I don't know as we sit here how many have started."

Jeff Brasure, general systems sales manager for the greater Providence district office of SimplexGrinnell, said his company has installed about a dozen sprinklers in Rhode Island businesses since the law passed.

His company's competitors have also installed some systems in places of assembly, but "the majority of places have not complied," Brasure said. "I think it's due to ignorance. It's not that people are trying to skirt the law, it's that they don't know what to do."

SimplexGrinnell is hosting an all-day symposium on the new fire laws Oct. 22 at the Crowne Plaza hotel, in Warwick, to "take some of the mystery out of the new code interpretations." Fire Marshal Owens is among the scheduled speakers.

Nobody knows how many places statewide need sprinklers because there has been no central depository for the information. Local cities and towns typically perform nightclub inspections, and keep their own records.

Owens estimated two weeks ago that "around 500 to 600" Rhode Island businesses will need to install sprinklers under the law.

A 2003 list of more than 1,000 Rhode Island places of public assembly, generated at Carcieri's order after the fire, lists about 100 businesses that hold more than 300 people, and do not have sprinklers. Places with occupancies above the cutoff of 300 patrons are probably going to need sprinklers.

The lower cutoff of 150 patrons is for businesses that fit the legal definition of a nightclub -- essentially a place that makes most of its money on beverages and cover charges, rather than food.

Interviews with fire officials in 13 communities -- Barrington, Bristol, Cranston, East Greenwich, Narragansett, Newport, North Providence, Tiverton, Warren, West Greenwich, Jamestown, Little Compton and West Warwick -- suggest that a total of about 35 to 40 sprinkler systems will be required in those communities, pending further inspections and research into the law.

Providence Fire Marshal George S. Farrell said his office is still conducting inspections. So far, Providence inspectors have identified 13 places of assembly that will need sprinklers, according to a report Farrell's office prepared for Owens.

Governor Carcieri last week directed Owens' office to collect information from the cities and towns on sprinklers and nightclubs, he said, including how many places have already installed sprinklers.

"If, let's say, half of them have, you'd feel better -- at least they're moving in that direction," Carcieri said. "If very few of them have, and we're now coming up on January '05, are we going to be sitting here in May and June with people coming in asking for extensions? That's one of the things I'm trying to get the facts on, and we don't have them."

OWENS SAID it has taken longer than expected to get the ticketing system working because, "It wasn't as easy as I thought it was to come to an agreement on the stipulations of it." Also, he said, the legislature modified the law in the 2004 session, setting amounts for fines and incorporating suggestions from fire officials. "You can't enforce a law before it's passed and it wasn't, and I had to follow that through."

The ticketing system will be coordinated through the District Court. Owens has asked the attorney general's office "to assign someone to work with me to do the policy and procedure," he said. "My main concern is that when someone decides to do this, they do it in a very meticulously step-by-step way. Plus the [money paid in fines] has to be controlled to the utmost, so we know how much is brought in, where it goes -- checks and balances."

Owens predicted that the ticketing system would be working "probably the end of October, the first of November -- hopefully," he said. "That's my goal."

Nighttime inspections have been complicated by the collective bargaining agreement in the fire marshal's office, which restricts the hours inspectors may be scheduled to work, Owens said. "That's an overtime issue that we have to deal with on our end," he said. "It has to be a negotiable thing. You just can't force people to go on the night shift."

Owens said he plans to pay inspectors overtime to work the nighttime hours, which is approximately $26 per hour with a minimum of four hours of duty. He said he hopes to start within a few weeks. Once the work begins, inspectors will visit nightclubs at peak hours for a "cursory overview" of exit signs, emergency lights, clear paths to exits, proper panic hardware on exit doors and crowd size, Owens said.

West Warwick Fire Chief Charles D. Hall said his inspectors have been conducting irregular spot checks of places of assembly on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights for about the past 10 months.

"People have been surprised to see us," Hall said, "but it has been valuable because we've been able to catch problems while they're still small."

In an interview two weeks ago, Owens said the night inspections conducted by his office would not be a total surprise. "People will know," he said. "We're going to notify them of what area of the state we'll be in" and that "an inspector might show up."

"An inspector is there to make sure you have compliance with the law," Owens said. "We could be storm troopers and just go out and hammer everybody. I think that's one way of doing it, out of fear. I don't think our society accepts that."

Owens' boss has a different philosophy on nighttime inspections.

"I wouldn't say you should notify them," Governor Carcieri said. "I think it's a lot more effective when it's a surprise inspection, frankly."

The Station was apparently over its legal capacity when the fire started. Carcieri said that a critical part of night inspections is to monitor clubs for overcrowding.

"To me the way you do that is with a surprise."

Carcieri interrupted himself to ask a staff person to make a note -- the governor needed to discuss this with the fire marshal.

With staff reports from Paul Edward Parker.