Digital Extra: The Station Fire

The World Burn Congress in Durham, N.C., helps 28 survivors of the fire at The Station nightclub learn how to heal.

12:21 PM EDT on Sunday, October 17, 2004

BY JENNIFER D. JORDAN
Journal Staff Writer

Journal photo / John Freidah

Linda Fisher, who sustained burns to a third of her body in the Station fire, cares for her five-year-old godson, Alexander Silveira, with the help of her daughter Amber, 14. Fisher attended the World Burn Congress, the nation's largest gathering of burn survivors, in Durham, N.C. last week.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Sharon Wilson's injuries from the Station nightclub fire are mostly internal. A herniated disk. Nerve damage in both legs.

And the guilt she feels every time she thinks of those who did not make it out that night, 20 months ago.

"Looking at me, no one would know I was in a fire," Wilson, 44, said. "My scars are on the inside."

Linda Fisher cannot hide her injuries. Burns cover her face, neck, hands and arms. A third of Fisher's body was burned in the Station fire. She's had six surgeries so far -- skin grafts so she can move her hands, corrective surgery to minimize scarring on her face.

Yet, she says she is grateful.

"I almost have my old face back," Fisher, 35, said. "My top lip is starting to look like the lip I can remember."

Wilson and Fisher came to Durham, last week, along with 26 other survivors of the Station fire and 14 of their friends and family, searching for ways to heal. The group attended the World Burn Congress, the nation's largest gathering of burn survivors, spending time with 300 other survivors and hundreds more of their caregivers and loved ones.

It is the 16th time the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors, a national advocacy and support group, has held the convention. Last year, a dozen Station survivors attended the congress, which was held in Cleveland. This year, the Station Nightclub Fire Relief Fund sponsored every survivor it could find who wanted to attend, according to the Rev. John Holt, who oversaw the fund.

"Some people ask me, what is World Burn? What is your purpose?" said Amy Acton, executive director of the Phoenix Society, and herself a burn survivor from Michigan. "It is to create a safe place emotionally for people to do the work we are here to do this week. To share our recovery, our triumphs and challenges. Everyone has their own story."

BURN SURVIVORS carry part of their stories on their bodies. At the convention, survivors without arms, legs, noses or ears talked about how grateful they were to be alive. "These aren't people you meet every day," said Station survivor Bill Long, 33, of Narragansett, who spent more than a month at Rhode Island Hospital recovering from his burns. "A lot of these people [burn survivors] don't go out much."

Long wishes more survivors from Rhode Island had come this year.

"It really gives you strength," he said. "You see people way worse off than you, and they're independent and they love life. It shows you there's a future beyond the depression."

Sharon Wilson has tried to move beyond her depression for a year. It swooped down on her last fall, after she realized she might never be able to return to the job she loved -- working in a group home for disabled adults. She also ran a side business, cleaning houses, and averaged 60 hours of work a week, between the two jobs. "I don't feel validated without a job," Wilson said. "I feel guilty because I don't work."

A pink, diagonal scar on her left arm, where she brushed against a metal railing in the burning nightclub, and droplet-sized burns on her back, where melting ceiling foam rained down, are Wilson's only visible wounds.

Wilson's nerve injuries were so severe, she did not walk for two months after the fire and needed surgery on her right knee. After the fire broke out, Wilson's 5-foot-1-inch inch body became trapped in the doorway of The Station, crushed on the cement floor by dozens of people. Her boyfriend, Robert Cripe, managed to pull her out in time. But Cripe's friend, Bonnie Hamelin, who had gone to The Station that night to meet Wilson, did not survive. Hamelin was 27.

"I felt a lot of survivor guilt, because she was younger and prettier than me. I kept thinking she should have lived, not me," Wilson said. A framed picture of Hamelin sits on a shelf in the West Warwick apartment Wilson and Cripe share, next to three ticket stubs for the Great White show that night and a singed $20 bill Wilson later realized she had clutched in her hand throughout the fire. Wilson says she began drinking a pint of vodka a day, to dull the pain and guilt. Many burn survivors suffer from depression and abuse alcohol or drugs, according to experts at the convention.

"The drinking would relax my body," Wilson said. "I would be up for days and days, my mind would race. I'd think about Bonnie." She and Cripe have argued about her drinking. Wilson said she's receiving counseling and has recently cut back. She worries about the toll her depression and drinking is taking on their relationship, which was only six months old when the fire occurred.

"It's hard, because he keeps everything in, and I'm very open," Wilson said. Cripe works long days as a truck driver. "He works 14 hours a day and I was trying to numb the fact that I couldn't go to work." They came to Durham together, along with Wilson's 23-year-old son James, who lives with them.

PAUL GORDON also began drinking heavily after the Station fire. The 42-year-old house builder could not get the faces of people trapped in the kitchen exit doorway out of his mind. He managed to pull out his wife, Karen, 39. She had heel marks on her back for days afterward. "In my dreams, I can still see them screaming," Gordon said.

Gordon suffered flash burns on his face that blistered his skin, burned his corneas and blinded him for five days. It was the second time Gordon survived a fire. When he was 15, a chemical explosion at his after-school job severely burned Gordon's hands, arms, feet and legs. He spent three months in the hospital and endured 25 operations, but within three years, Gordon got movement back in his scarred hands and began working in construction. The Station fire "brought back some of the memories, of when I was 15," Gordon said. "That never goes away, being surrounded by fire."

Karen Gordon saw her husband falling apart, unable to work and submerged in depression, but did not know what to do. "I noticed it, but I couldn't say anything. I told him he's got to get help," she said. Gordon told her he handled the first fire on his own and he could handle this, too. Soon, he realized that was not true.

"You can get very bitter when something is not right and you bring it home with you," Gordon said. The couple live in West Warwick and have been together for 12 years; this is the third marriage for both. They want to make it work. Gordon eventually went into a detox facility and has not had a drink in three months. They decided to come to Durham together. The last day of the convention, Gordon said he felt a change.

"When I walked in here, I saw burned people," he said. "Now I see people."

LINDA FISHER asked her husband, Kevin, and 14-year-old daughter, Amber, to come with her to Durham. She attended last year's conference with a friend who had also survived the blaze. This year, she wanted her family with her.

Outspoken and strong-willed, Fisher, of Cranston, pushed herself to recover, physically and emotionally, and credits the support of her family and friends with her progress. While she cannot yet return to her job, working full-time at stores such as KB Toys and Sears, Fisher tries to do almost everything she did before the fire. Her hands are so damaged, however, that she cannot always open jars and bottles. Fisher bristles at the notion that she needs help, but at the same time says she wishes Kevin, 37, would sometimes automatically open bottles for her when she is struggling.

"He doesn't get that I don't want to ask all the time," she said.

But Kevin, a quiet man, admires his wife's resilience and independence and said he wants her to keep trying.

"Half the time I notice, and half the time I don't," he said. "I want her to ultimately do it. I just want her to be everything she wants to be." The fire only strengthened their relationship, he says. "She's still here and everything is fine. We still have everything we had and more -- more history, more faith in ourselves."

Fisher agrees, but also says she changed the night she was trapped in front of the greenhouse windows of The Station. She was burned from the waist up when she stood and tried to kick out a window. It would not break. Fisher dropped to the ground, resigned to die on the floor next to her friend. She felt at peace, she said, and simply asked God to take care of Kevin and Amber. Then someone outside broke a window and pulled her through.

As badly injured as she was, Fisher managed to stay on her feet until her husband got to the restaurant across the street from the nightclub.

"When he saw me standing there at the Cowesett Inn that night, he said he knew I would be fine," Fisher said. "He wants me to be the Linda of February 19, 2003. And I'm not."

Fisher's husband and daughter say that as severely injured as Fisher is, they have not struggled to adjust to her new body and appearance. They are just glad to have her with them.

"When she came home from the hospital, I was happy. I didn't care what she looked like," Amber said. "It seemed a lot worse until we came here and saw people who were worse off than she is. Now we've gotten to meet a lot of new people and learn new things."

Fisher says she has not spent a lot of time mourning her prefire body.

"When my nurse was taking off my bandages, she told me I might not want to look, but I had to see what I had," Fisher said. "The fact I had all of my fingers -- I knew they would be horribly scarred and disfigured, but I was OK with that. It may not look pretty, but it all works." Fisher struggled with depression after the fire, but says it has gotten better.

"Every once in a while, I have a dark moment and say, what a freaking mess. How can Kevin stand to look at me?"

It isn't hard for her husband. "I fell in love with who she is," Kevin said. He is proud his wife stood up in the fire and tried to get out. "It was the best thing she could have done, because it let people on the outside know people were trapped inside," he said. "She had to get burned in order to live."