A victim is rushed from the burning Station nightclub, on Cowesett Avenue in West Warwick on Feb. 20, 2003. Providence Journal files / KRIS CRAIG

The Providence Journal has identified 462 people who, according to legal documents, police witness statements, survivors and others, were in The Station nightclub when it caught fire in 2003, ultimately killing 100 people and injuring more than 200 others.

The count of 462 exceeds all of the various limits on the club’s capacity that had been calculated by the Town of West Warwick. Those limits ranged from as low as 253 to as high as 404, according to town documents.

It also underscores the lax oversight at the nightclub. No one — not the nightclub’s owners, not public officials — kept track of how many people were in the building, and no evidence has been disclosed that town officials formally transmitted the capacity limits to the brothers who owned The Station.

Shortly after the fire, The Journal began compiling a list of who was in the building. The newspaper has periodically updated and published that list.

The count rose to 462 last month after Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, in response to a public records request by The Journal, disclosed tens of thousands of pages of evidence that investigators had collected while preparing for criminal trials stemming from the fire. The material released Nov. 8 included a list of 458 people prosecutors believed were inside the West Warwick nightclub when it caught fire just after 11 p.m. on Feb. 20, 2003.

Several people on The Journal’s list do not appear on the state’s, and the state list had about a dozen the newspaper did not. By comparing both, the newspaper compiled the list of 462 people. The actual number of people inside the nightclub when it caught fire is probably slightly higher. An exact tally may never be possible because some of those involved have avoided publicity and official investigators. The newspaper is aware of two others who were said to be inside the club, but whose presence could not be confirmed.

Until this month, The Journal’s list was the only public accounting of who was in The Station on the night of the worst fire ever on Rhode Island soil. The newspaper originally published its tally on Sept. 21, 2003, showing the names of 412 people who were there. The paper based that tally on the state’s list of who died; more than 200 survivors interviewed by Journal reporters; lawsuits and legal claims; relatives of survivors; hospital records, and photo and video records of the fire.

A week later, after people came forward who were not included on the initial list, the newspaper revised the count to 427. After tracking more people down, the number was revised again in October of that year to 430 and, two months later, to 432.

In January 2004, after The Journal filed a public records lawsuit, Governor Carcieri released a list of people who had called state officials to report they had survived the fire. Based on that, the newspaper increased its total to 440, which was published Feb. 20, 2004, the fire’s first anniversary.

After that, filings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court led the paper to add three more names to its list, though the list of 443 was never published.

The newspaper’s list remained static until February of this year, when the attorney general released several hundred witness statements as part of his effort to comply with The Journal’s public records request. The newspaper added another eight names as a result, raising the total to 451, which also was not published.

In the days and weeks after the fire, it became clear that neither the nightclub’s management nor the West Warwick police officer posted at The Station on a detail was keeping close tabs on how many people were in the building and whether its legal capacity had been exceeded.

In an interview conducted three hours after the fire broke out, nightclub co-owner Jeffrey A. Derderian told the police that he believed the building’s capacity was 350 to 400, according to a police report. At 10 p.m., about an hour before the fire, Derderian checked the clicker that club employees used to keep track of how many patrons had entered, according to the report. Dederian said the headcount then was 250 to 260, according to the report.

In an interview with The Journal a week after the fire, nightclub manager Kevin J. Beese Sr. said he thought the building’s capacity was 315 when pool tables and other tables were set up and 480 when they were not. He said that he checked the clicker between 10 and 10:30 and that it was somewhere between 310 and 320.

But, Beese said, the clicker only counted the paying crowd. It did not include club staff, members of the three bands playing that night and several dozen people on the guest list.

West Warwick Fire Marshal Denis P. Larocque had set four different capacity limits for The Station during a three-month period just before Jeffrey Derderian and his brother, Michael A. Derderian, bought the business. It is unclear, though, whether any of those limits was transmitted to the Derderians.

Late in 1999, Larocque set the nightclub’s normal capacity at 253 people, but allowed 317 people if certain tables and chairs were removed, according to a memo to Police Chief Peter Brousseau on Dec. 30, 1999.

Three months later, Larocque revised those numbers — to 258 with tables and 404 without.

Town records suggest Larocque boosted the limit with tables from 253 to 258 by changing the way he accounted for fractions when calculating the capacity of each area within the club.

Larocque boosted the without-tables limit from 317 to 404 by including additional space from which tables would be removed and by considering the entire club “standing room” — a designation normally applied to areas near a building’s entrance where people would wait for short periods of time. The standing-room formula requires less space for each person in a building than the formula for a standard room without furniture.

Larocque has said that he told Michael Derderian what the capacity was and that he sent a memo to the nightclub owners saying the same thing. But Larocque has been unable to produce his file copy of that memo. Investigators have not found the copy Larocque said he sent to the Derderians, though many of the nightclub’s business records were destroyed in the fire.

Also, Larocque did not supply The Station with a placard to display the capacity in the club.

Town records include a memo labeled “THE STATION” that says, among other things, “We have spoke [sic] with Fire Chief Laroch [sic] and are crystal clear as to the amount of patrons we are allowed to have.” The memo was presented at the Town Council meeting at which West Warwick approved a liquor license for the Derderians. The memo does not say who wrote it, and a lawyer for the Derderians has said the letterhead on which it is written was used by a previous owner of the club, not the Derderians.

pparker@projo.com