Feb. 20, 2003, was a busy day for Brian Butler, a camera operator at Channel 12.

He raced around to a handful of stories: A chess club event. The opening of a play. A man whose prayers for his son’s health had been answered. A pedestrian hit by a car. A brothel that had been raided.

By the time he arrived at his final assignment of the day, he was tired. And it showed in his work, he said. He wasn’t being creative. He wasn’t getting the good shots.

Shortly after 11 p.m., he peered through the one-inch-by-one-inch viewfinder of his camera. Rock band Great White took the stage, underscoring its entrance with fireworks, three fountains of sparks that shot up from the stage. Through the sparks, Butler noticed a black-and-white trickle of flame climbing the wall of The Station nightclub.

The world has become familiar with the video Butler shot of the fire starting and people fleeing for their lives. But Butler has never spoken publicly about that night. Last week, the attorney general disclosed — among thousands of pages of documents — a statement Butler gave to the police and testimony he gave to a grand jury investigating the fire. In many ways, his statement and testimony are more vivid than the video itself.

Butler reported to his assignment editor, Rebecca Johnson, around 3 that afternoon. She already had a few things for him to do. Butler didn’t recall much detail about the assignment at The Station, in West Warwick. “She may have mentioned something about it for later in the evening,” he told the grand jury, “but she had given me two or three other assignments that were happening before that so I didn’t, you know, I didn’t really have to pay much attention to something that was, you know, six or seven hours away.”

One of his first assignments was to deliver a live truck — a mobile studio capable of broadcasting from anywhere — to the brothel location so reporter Jeffrey Derderian could do a live report. Derderian owned the Station nightclub with his brother, Michael.

Outside the brothel, Derderian and Butler talked about the nightclub assignment, Butler told the police.

“Rebecca told you about coming to my place tonight, right?” Derderian asked. “My brother and I had this place — went in together on the place a few years ago.”

“Yeah,” Butler replied, “she told me about it. 10?”

“Yeah, I’ll give you the details when you get there.”

Butler got tied up at the assignment about a man whose prayers were coming true. It was about 10:40 by the time he got to The Station. He parked at a car dealership across the road, behind a police car, because the nightclub’s parking lot and a road alongside the club were jammed.

Andrea Mancini was collecting tickets inside the nightclub’s entrance. “We’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

Tracy King, a bouncer, introduced himself. “I’ll be escorting you around tonight, you know. Jeff wants me to stay with you and, you know, help you out in any way I can.”

“Great.”

“Let’s go see if we can find Jeff and get you started.”

Butler told the police and the grand jury that, at this point, he still had no idea what he was supposed to shoot.

“What do you need?” Butler asked Derderian.

“Ah, just generic bar video, you know, a shot of the crowd, wide shot — at least one wide shot of the crowd. Shoot some exit signs, you know, just generic bar video.”

Derderian left and King asked, “Where do you want to go first?”

They pushed through the packed nightclub. “Make a hole,” King told the crowd. “Make a hole.” Patrons turned, saw King’s beefy, 6-foot-plus frame, and got out of the way.

Butler took shots of the crowd from the stage. A twisting, artistic shot of the stage lights. Footage of sound technician Paul Vanner. People having a good time. A picture of a Budweiser beer sign.

“To be honest, I wasn’t terribly creative that night,” he told the grand jury. “There are some nights ... when the shots just fall into your eyes and you can see them and it’s easy. ... I don’t know whether I was, you know, just tired or — I couldn’t seem to find a shot that night, let’s put it that way.”

He shot bartender Julie Mellini at a cash register, Michael Jandron restocking the bar, waitress Irina Gershelis selling shots of liquor in test tubes.

He ran into Derderian again.

“Are you all set?” Derderian asked.

“Yeah, you know, I might find another shot here and there.”

Derderian seemed distracted by business and walked away.

Butler asked King to lead the way back to the stage.

“Make a hole. Make a hole.” But then King turned off to the side, according to Butler, to talk to Derderian.

As Butler continued by himself, the stage lights came on and the recorded music being played changed.

“Here they come, the band you’ve been waiting for,” DJ Michael Gonsalves announced.

Butler put his camera on his shoulder, flipped on its light to illuminate the frenzied crowd and started recording. He was about 10 feet from the stage, about 4 or 5 rows of people back.

The band makes its entrance. The fireworks go off, so bright that they momentarily blind Butler’s camera. When the light levels off, Butler sees the trickle of flame on the left side of the stage through the tiny black-and-white viewfinder. He moves the camera away so he can see better. The fireworks stop, and he sees the flames on the left are nothing compared to a fire on the right that is growing rapidly.

“It didn’t take anything after that to realize this is not good,” he told the grand jury. “ ‘I’ve gotta go.’ ”

Butler reached toward King and tapped him on the shoulder. But it wasn’t King, the bouncer who had been clearing paths through the crowd all night. “Look!” Butler said to the man.

Then Butler reversed the camera on his shoulder, so it pointed over his back, and turned toward the front door. Somehow, a path through the crowd had opened up.

“Two girls I remember looking up at me like, should we leave?” Butler took a long pause in his testimony. “Yes, time to go.”

Butler made it almost to the entrance hallway before the crowd closed in around him.

“I was stopped by the crowd,” he testified. “We’re all baby-stepping. We’re still moving.”

“I remember saying something to someone like, calm, you know, relax, we’ll get out of here. ... I think it was in response to some girl who I was basically crushing along with everyone else. When you’re caught in a crowd there is no, you have no control over yourself.”

As Butler went through the front door, he noticed a small table partially blocking the way. With the camera still on his shoulder, he grabbed the table with his free hand and pulled it out with him. The next thing he knew, he was at the bottom of a short stairway outside the door, not sure how he got down.

From this point on, he just carried his camera, more or less pointing it where he was going, but not looking through the viewfinder and framing shots.

He walked along the front of the building, a part that had greenhouse-style windows. He noticed a small panel that looked like it could be moved. He put his left foot through it, hoping to create an exit.

“I thought to myself for a second, you know, when they put out this fire, they’re gonna wonder why I started destroying their building,” he told the grand jury. “I pray to this day somebody got out that way, but I don’t know. I wasn’t looking.”

He went to the end of the building, where he saw band members and others congregating near the stage door. As he started back toward the front door, he heard the sound of breaking glass and screams.

“At that point is when I realized the severity of what’s going on, that, that this thing is, nobody is gonna stop it.”

At the front door, he found people trapped in a pile. Just beyond, he saw people breaking windows and pulling people out. He found it heartening, knowing that more people were getting out, even though the front door was blocked.

While out front, his camera captured Derderian going toward the front door and trying to remove an advertising banner that was blocking the rescue efforts there. Butler said he didn’t remember seeing Derderian then.

He went back to the stage door, then around behind the building. Finding no one there, he headed back to the front.

As he walked along the side of the nightclub, he could see the flames at the front of the building reflected in the side of the band’s tour bus.

“I knew, I knew what was happening to those people in the doorway at that time and I did not want to see that,” he told the grand jury. “So I deliberately stayed away from the front door.”

He went back to his Channel 12 SUV, where he had left his cell phone, to call his editor. It took him three or four tries before the network was available. He bumped into Derderian, who spotted Butler’s camera.

“He said just turn that thing off,” Butler testified. “It wasn’t like an order, like I was working with him in any way. It was just like, that’s the last thing I need right now. It’s kinda that kind of attitude.”

Later, as Butler shot more footage, he saw a group of state troopers.

“I have to tell you that I have videotape of the fire from inside the club when it started,” he said.

The troopers stopped talking and looked at him.

“Come with me,” a lieutenant said, and took him to a captain inside the Cowesett Inn, where a command center had been set up across the street from The Station. “Tell him what you just told me.”

Epilogue

Mancini, King and Gonsalves died in the fire. Vanner, Mellini, Jandron and Gershelis survived.

pparker@projo.com