Leo Costantino and other volunteers from the Family Assistance Center are commended in the response report for their work to make things easier for the victims' families.

08:59 AM EDT on Wednesday, July 14, 2004

BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer

Journal photo / Steve Szydlowski Leo Costantino, shown here in his West Warwick home, is one of several volunteers commended in the fire response report for helping the victims' families.

Leo Costantino is an ex-Marine, a Vietnam veteran. But nothing had prepared him for the suffering he saw in the days following The Station nightclub fire.

Costantino was one of a handful of people singled out for praise by the consultants who analyzed how state and local authorities responded to the disaster.

The rookie West Warwick Town Council member showed up at the Crowne Plaza hotel, where the families of the missing had gathered to find out the fate of their loved ones. At first, he wandered around, unsure of what to say or do.

"I'm a hard guy, a Marine," Costantino, 60, said yesterday. "I'm not a guy who handles things like this well."

Then, he began listening to the hushed conversations around him. And, like so many of the volunteers at the Family Assistance Center, he began solving the small but seemingly insurmountable problems that bedeviled families.

When one family became agitated because the police couldn't find their son's car, Costantino asked his own son to drive around the neighborhood until the vehicle was located. When one victim was identified at a Boston hospital, Costantino arranged for a bus from the West Warwick Senior Center to drive two families to the city.

Although there were so many things that went wrong during the nightclub fire, the Family Assistance Center, run by the American Red Cross and the state Emergency Management Agency, was one place that got it right.

The center, modeled after the approach used to help families after the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990, provided a safe haven where friends and family members could grieve, obtain information about the missing and get much-needed assistance, financial and otherwise.

During its five days of operation, the center provided for "the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs of more than 300 family members and friends with a staff of 460 professionals and volunteers," said the consultants.

The Crowne Plaza, working with the Red Cross, served more than 7,500 meals. The victim information hot line responded to 18,000 calls.

Families were treated "with the utmost sensitivity" when they were notified of a relative's death. There was only one instance in which a family member was told that two missing relatives had been hospitalized when, in fact, they had died.

Costantino became especially close to an elderly man who had driven from Pennsylvania to the Crowne Plaza to await word on his son. The son's remains were eventually identified and the father requested that he be cremated. On the day that his son's remains were scheduled to be released, the father of the boy asked Costantino to drive him around town so he could personally thank all the people who had been so kind and thoughtful.

"Each stop," the consultants wrote, "was an emotional catharsis. In each case, the father wanted each of them to know something about the son whom he loved so dearly."

When it was time to pick up the remains, Costantino insisted on driving the father to the funeral home. Then, the two men rode in silence to the new assistance center, where the father had left his car.

Costantino remembers "holding the urn in my arms, the tears coming down my face."

The father placed the remains in the front seat, secured the box with a seat belt and placed a photograph of his son on top of the box.

Worried about the father's well-being, Costantino suggested that he delay his trip until the following morning.

But the father said, "I'll be OK. I have Derek next to me."