Nearly four years after a rock band’s fireworks ignited the Station nightclub, the public yesterday got its most detailed look to date at the investigation into the fire that killed 100 people and injured more than 200 others.

Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch made public more than 10,000 pages of grand jury testimony and witness statements, as well as seven videos, three of which showed the burning building and a fourth, shot by the West Warwick Police Department, showing investigators combing through the charred ruins of the nightclub.

The disclosure of material comes in response to a public records request by The Providence Journal, which was joined by other media organizations. It was also fulfilling a pledge Lynch made to relatives of the people who died to make the evidence available to answer lingering questions after the criminal prosecutions ended without public trials.

“I firmly believe that our disclosures of information have served the public interest and public good, but I have no illusions about the high costs they have privately exacted upon The Station fire families,” Lynch said in a statement yesterday. “I understand that the release of case information — and particularly today’s information, which describes and depicts the events of Feb. 20, 2003, in vivid detail — could well be very traumatic and painful, and I want the victims’ families and the survivors to know how much I regret any further sorrow this causes them.”

The materials that Lynch made public yesterday did not include the witness statement that Jeffrey A. Derderian, who owned The Station with his brother, Michael, gave to West Warwick police while the building was still burning. A spokesman for Lynch said Derderian’s statement was in a group of documents that lawyers still have to review and probably will be made public in coming weeks along with other witness statements.

But, at the request of The Journal, Jeffrey Derderian yesterday also released his statement.

It is the first time the public has heard Derderian discuss the details of the fire, including how many people he believed were in the nightclub that night and what he thought the building’s legal capacity was.

The documents released to the public yesterday, through the attorney general’s Web site as well as to media outlets, ranged from highly detailed descriptions of how The Station kept track of its finances to dramatic eyewitness accounts of the fight for survival.

The testimony included:

•Fire survivor Richard T. Sanetti describing an “ominous point” during the fire in a witness statement: “Do you want to hear this? For awhile, you could hear everybody screaming and I couldn’t hear the fire ... everybody kind of went — the place — all the screaming kind of stopped all at one time and I knew that everybody in there had died or was actually going to die. They were unconscious. There was no hope. I remember hearing the fire at that point.” In at least one of the videos released yesterday, Richard Sanetti can be heard bellowing the name of his niece, Bridget Sanetti. He told investigators he hoped she could hear his voice through the dense black smoke and follow it to an open window. She never emerged.

•Descriptions of The Station as a business that “barely made enough money to pay the bills” and the Derderians trying to sell, with a fresh deal in the works the day of the fire.

•Conflicting accounts about whether the band that night, Great White, had permission to use fireworks during the show. The fireworks showered sparks on highly flammable polyurethane foam that had been placed on the nightclub’s walls as soundproofing. The foam caught the sparks, kindled the blaze and helped it race through the building.

Jeffrey Derderian’s three-page, handwritten statement was taken at 2:20 a.m. — a little more than three hours after the fire started — by a West Warwick detective.

For the first time, Derderian’s statement gives his account of where he was when the fire started and what he did next.

“Around 11:00 p.m. the band started to perform — shortly after while at the main bar I turned and saw fire coming from the stage. I then went to the front area and grabbed a fire extinguisher and handed it to someone, I then went to the entrance to help people get out of the building.”

He said he believed the legal capacity of the building to be 350 to 400. Town documents show the capacity to be a maximum of 404, depending on the arrangement of tables and chairs.

Derderian said that, at around 10 p.m., he checked the clicker that was used to count patrons at the front door. It was 250 to 260, he said.

The Derderians had come close to selling their business three months before the fire, but the sale collapsed, according to witness statements, because the building’s owner — Ray Villanova of Triton Realty — would not let the brothers out of their lease.

Nancy and Armando Machado, who gave a Warwick address in 2003, told investigators that they responded to an ad in The Providence Journal, in which the Derderians offered The Station business for $199,000.

In a meeting at the club on Nov. 20, 2002, the Derderians told the Machados that they were getting out of the nightclub business to invest in “bigger and better things in the real estate field.” Michael Derderian did most of the talking, Mr. Machado told investigators.

The Machados asked about the club finances. According to the witness statements, the Derderians demanded a nonrefundable $20,000 deposit before they would show their financial books.

Mr. Machado took out a home-equity loan to finance the deposit on The Station, and signed a purchase-and-sale agreement on Nov. 24, 2002.

By some accounts, The Station was failing as a business.

John Muto, an accountant who prepared the Derderians’ taxes, told the grand jury that, in the two most recent years’ returns, The Station had shown losses. In 2000, the business showed a tax loss of $55,394, which, not including depreciation, was a cash loss of about $31,500. In 2001, the business did better, with a tax loss of $40,065, that translated into a cash profit of $1,500. Muto testified he had not been able to prepare the 2002 returns because investigators had seized The Station’s business records.

Kristina Link, who married Michael Derderian after the fire, told the grand jury that, as far as she knew, the Derderian brothers never received any money from The Station, either in wages or profits. In fact, the opposite was true, she testified. “If we didn’t make enough money for the weekends to cover bills then, you know, there were times that Michael had to put the money in.”

That was true, she testified, for the Great White performance the night of the fire, for which Michael Derderian had to front $2,500 in personal funds to pay the deposit for the band. “The club always had insufficient funds.”

Only after Machado paid the deposit did he learn that the building at 211 Cowesett Ave. was leased. Armando Machado researched land records at Warwick Town Hall and discovered that the Derderians did not own the building.

“The Machados met with Mr. Villanova and learned that the Derderians could not legally sell the business because they had a five-year lease with Villanova who was unaware the Derderians were trying to sell the business,” according to a state police report from last July.

The deal fell apart. The Derderians said they would return the $20,000 deposit after they sold the club to someone else. As of last July, the Machados had not yet gotten their money back.

A second potential deal for The Station nightclub was nearing completion when the nightclub burned down.

Michael O’Connor, of Narragansett, told the state police on March 8, 2003, that he and a partner, Daniel Gormley, were in negotiations to buy the club from the Derderians in early February 2003, for a price of $190,000.

The morning of the fire, Feb. 20, the new partners filed papers to create a limited partnership — The Station Club LLC — to buy the business.

They had signed a pre-purchase agreement with the Derderians. Several issues remained to be worked out, such as arranging to have the Derderians stay on for six months as consultants until the new partners were comfortable running the business, O’Connor told the state police.

To get around the landlord’s reluctance to let the Derderians out of their lease, O’Connor and his partner had discussed making the Derderians a part of their LLC.

The morning of the fire, O’Connor picked up the necessary paperwork to begin the process to transfer the liquor license, he told the police.

That night, he went to The Station, arriving shortly before 9 p.m. “My intent was just to see the band and see how the place was run during a — you know — a function like that.”

He saw Jeff Derderian in the club, but barely had words with him — Derderian was very busy “running the place” the night of a concert. O’Connor listened to one of the opening bands, and then left around 10:30 p.m., about 30 minutes before the fire started. A friend called later to tell him there was a fire at The Station. On television that night, O’Connor watched the flames obliterate the club he was about to buy.

For four years, Great White and the Derderians have disagreed over whether the nightclub gave the band permission to use pyrotechnics at the show. No permits for fireworks were ever issued for the Great White show at The Station, so the fireworks were illegal regardless of whether the club gave the OK.

Daniel M. Biechele, the tour manager for Great White, told investigators just hours after the blaze that Michael Derderian had given oral permission for Biechele to shoot off the pyrotechnics — known as gerbs — during the show.

“The first conversation I had with Michael [Derderian] regarding advancing the show, we went over all the details,” Biechele said in a statement to West Warwick police in the early morning of Feb. 21.

That telephone conversation with Derderian took place about a week before the show, around Feb. 12 or 13, he said.

Biechele claimed that he reminded Michael Derderian that he had used pyrotechnics in The Station before, apparently in 2000, when Biechele was tour manger for the hard rock band W.A.S.P. He claimed he said to Michael Derderian, “Is it OK to — if we use the gerbs there…because I did last time.”

He said Derderian asked: What are they?

“I said, basically that they’re 15-by-15 cold spark gerbs. We use them twice during the show, once at the beginning in front of the drums, once at the end on the mike stand … they spray 15 feet [for] 15 seconds. They’re a big version of a sparkler for Fourth of July. You can stick you hand in front of them a foot away and the sparks just bounce off.

“I believe what I said was, ‘Can I — we — still do the, the gerbs?’

Derderian, according to Biechele, gave permission to use the pyro. “He said yes we could use them. He didn’t ask me or tell me anything about permits or licenses or fire marshals that would be needed.”

Prosecutors later probed Biechele’s recollection of his appearance at The Station with W.A.S.P.

“I do recall using the gerbs at The Station” on the W.A.S.P. tour, Biechele said, “which are the same ones we used” with Great White.

He was asked: Did you have express permission for the use of those pyrotechnics at The Station for W.A.S.P. in advance of the show?

“Yes…I dealt with Jeff Derderian on that show. I don’t remember the specific conversations, but I do recall having permission to use them.”

Biechele’s testimony about W.A.S.P.’s appearance at The Station conflicts with a statement given by the band’s lead singer, who goes by stage name Blackie Lawless. His real name is Steven E. Duren.

Agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives interviewed Duren at his California home in June 2003. Duren confirmed that Biechele worked for him as a personal assistant for seven years. But he said that his band did not use pyrotechnics at The Station when they played there in 2000 because the ceilings were too low for the special effects. He told investigators that he didn’t like the club, and fired his agent for booking W.A.S.P. at what Duren thought was a bad venue.

Biechele maintained that he depended on club owners to tell him what was safe inside their establishments. “I go in and out of venues on a daily basis, so I have no way of, of knowing … I have to use their judgment on them telling me yes, that pyro can be used in this building..”

He claimed that, “Jeff Derderian was at the side of the stage multiple times while the gerbs were being wired.”

At about the same time Biechele was talking to investigators, Jeffrey Derderian also was telling them about the fireworks.

“At no time did I or my brother authorize or OK the use of any sparkle material or pyro by the band Great White,” Derderian said in his witness statement. “My brother had several conversations with tour mngr [Biechele] about arrival time, playing-time, hotel rooms and food to be provided for band.”

Another witness, David Stone, who operated the lights at the club, told the grand jury that Biechele informed him about three hours before the show: “I’m gonna set off some pyro.” Biechele arranged with Stone to have the stage dark as the band began to play.

Stone said he had seen special effects at concerts at The Station in the past.

The documents and some of the videos released yesterday, as well as documents and videos previously released, can be found on the attorney general’s Web site at www.riag.ri.gov/

pparker@projo.com