State prosecutors deflected difficult questions away from West Warwick’s fire marshal several times while he testified before the grand jury that investigated the Station nightclub fire, according to transcripts that were divulged yesterday.

The normally secret transcripts were provided to The Providence Journal and the Associated Press by Kathleen M. Hagerty, a criminal defense lawyer who represented the brothers who owned the nightclub. In this case, the Superior Court has removed the veil of secrecy shrouding the transcripts and ordered Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch to make the testimony public.

Lynch, who has said he hopes to release the entirety of the transcripts by the end of the month, yesterday decried Hagerty’s disclosure, calling it “insensitive in the extreme.”

In a later statement through a spokesman, Lynch declined to discuss the content of Fire Marshal Denis P. Larocque’s testimony until all of the grand jury material has been made public and “there is the proper context as to what came before and after in the grand jury testimony.” Spokesman Michael J. Healey added, “Any suggestion that anybody is making to the effect that this office protected anybody in its prosecution of this case is both ludicrous and offensive.”

The toughest questions for Larocque were about two topics: his calculation of the maximum number of people who could safely be in the building and how he missed highly flammable polyurethane foam that had been glued to the nightclub’s walls as soundproofing. When a rock band took the stage on the night of Feb. 20, 2003, sparks from fireworks showered the foam, which caught fire. One hundred people died as a result and more than 200 others were injured. It was a violation of the fire code to have flammable wall coverings.

A grand jury charged three people with involuntary manslaughter. The brothers who owned the nightclub, Jeffrey A. and Michael A. Derderian, pleaded no contest. The rock band tour manager who lit the fireworks, Daniel M. Biechele, pleaded guilty. Biechele, 30, and Michael Derderian, 45, were sentenced to serve four years in prison. Jeffrey Derderian, 40, was ordered to perform 500 hours of community service.

In December 1999, before the Derderians bought the nightclub, Larocque had set the maximum capacity of the building at 317. To have that many people, the owner had to remove tables and chairs from three areas of the club. In March 2000, Larocque increased the capacity to 404. He said he did so after Michael Derderian, then a prospective buyer of the business, asked whether the building could hold 400 people, according to the testimony. Derderian, through lawyer Hagerty, yesterday denied the conversation ever took place.

In front of the grand jury, prosecutor William Ferland asked Larocque about the increase. “What changed between December of ’99 and three months later, March of 2000?”

Larocque cited two key factors. The Derderians planned to take furniture out of the main barroom, in addition to the three areas from which the previous owner would remove tables and chairs. Also, Larocque said he used a different formula for calculating the capacity. Capacity of each room is determined by measuring the floor size in square feet, then dividing that by a set number depending on how the room would be used.

The first time, Larocque said he divided the square feet by 15 for rooms with furniture and by 7 for rooms without. The second time, he said he used 5 for rooms without furniture.

“OK,” Ferland asked. “So I guess I’m probably a little confused about this. The formula that you relied upon initially in December, you used fifteen and seven, is that accurate?”

“Correct.”

“OK,” Ferland asked. “So explain what was the triggering event that brought it from seven to five.”

Larocque said he had determined that the building was actually “grandfathered” under the 1968 fire code, meaning it didn’t have to abide by the more stringent modern code because the building predated those provisions. Instead of 15 and 7, the 1968 code used 10 and 6, Larocque said. It also had a “standing room” provision that allowed using 5, a provision also in the modern code.

“So if I’m not having anybody sit in my club,” Ferland asked, “they’re all going to be standing, I can legally pack more people in is what you’re telling me?”

“There’s less square footage required per person, yes.”

But Ferland never asked Larocque the difference between a room without furniture, where everybody would be standing, and a standing room, or why the code made a distinction. Those didn’t come until later in the session, when grand jurors had a chance to question Larocque.

“I need a clarification on the difference between the divisor of five and seven,” one juror said. “Because at first I thought seven was standing, no furniture, and now I hear the five, standing. Please tell me what that seven is for, what’s the difference between a seven and a five?”

Rather than allow Larocque to answer, Ferland suggested that Larocque show the juror the section of the code that contains the formulas.

After a discussion about aisle space, another juror pursued the five and seven issue. “Actually, I had the same question that juror did, if you could explain the difference again between the five and the seven.”

This time, prosecutor Randall White answered for Larocque, reading several sections of the fire code to the grand jury.At one point, a prosecutor who is not identified in the transcript, asks Larocque whether he saw the polyurethane foam on the walls during inspections in November 1999 and in November and December 2000, when he visited the nightclub three times in two weeks.

Larocque said he did not see it.

“Now how is that, that you were not able to see that material?”

“These are called fire safety inspections, what we do for liquor license renewals,” Larocque answered. “These are not full building code-compliance inspections. ... Those are more in-depth inspections. ... It’s a maintenance-type inspection. It tells us who’s maintaining their building and who isn’t. These are mostly fire systems or fire equipment is what we’re going there to test. ... What we call the — we call a four E’s, these types of inspection. That’s extinguishers, emergency lighting, exit signs and egress. These type of inspections are pretty much focused on those items. ... These are inspections geared toward those basic items.”

Ferland then asks Larocque whether he would take action if he noticed violations beyond the “four E’s.”

“If you see something outside that scope you obviously do not ignore it, you do cite it.” Larocque noted two other violations from the same inspections — an open can of gasoline in the basement and a broken ceiling tile near an exit — that he noticed and recorded in his report.

Ferland did not press further on the foam. Instead, he asked one question about the maximum capacity of the club, then he dismissed the grand jury for its morning break.

But jurors didn’t let Larocque off the hook.

One juror later asked how Larocque could have missed the foam during a November 2002 inspection, especially because it covered an illegal inward-swinging door that Larocque said became the focus of his inspection.

“The door itself, again, shouldn’t have been there number one, so I’m not really focusing on what’s on the door,” Larocque answered. “My inspection at that time is what I said earlier, was — it’s a basic fire safety inspection.”

A juror continued: “But if you see another potential hazard —”

Ferland jumped in: “Again, the date. The date, March 21, 2000.”

The conversation then turned away from November 2002.