Rhode Island’s new fire code, which essentially punishes the wrong people for the Station nightclub fire, needs to be dramatically overhauled. While it is encouraging that a House oversight committee is looking into the matter, it is discouraging that some of its members seem interested only in minor tinkering.

Statistics are hard to come by, but the code has clearly hurt Rhode Island’s economy and hard-working people. Small businesses, particularly in the historic buildings that are so much a part of the Ocean State’s charm, are confronting draconian upgrades costing tens of thousands of dollars or more. Some have shut down or moved out of state, costing the state much-needed jobs. Non-profit groups, churches and libraries face enormous costs that will needlessly divert untold thousands of dollars from their vital missions.

This might be justifiable if citizens faced a reasonable risk of death from fire at these buildings. But they do not. Only a miniscule proportion of fatal fires occur in the buildings covered by the new code. Most deaths occur in apartment buildings or houses, not businesses.

Indeed, no one would have died at the Station nightclub had the code in existence at the time simply been enforced.And while the new and much tougher regulations make public-safety sense in terms of nightclubs, which can be packed with people and difficult to empty quickly, such regulatory overkill makes no sense at all when applied to other buildings that are not nearly as crowded and have ample exits allowing people to escape quickly if a fire ever broke out.

Does the oversight committee understand this? Members talked about simply giving businesses more time to implement the draconian code, and about trying to standardize its enforcement. That misses the point. Citizens have been badly hurt by the legislature’s possibly well-meaning overreaction to the Station fire, and they need relief.

At the very least, the committee should explore Rep. Joseph Trillo’s suggestion that the strong national standard for fire alarms be implemented, instead of Rhode Island’s code. That would slash the cost of meeting the code by some 75 percent, Mr. Trillo contends, without sacrificing safety in any meaningful way.

Better yet would be to pull back from the new code, with the exception of nightclubs, and return with a new approach that makes the public’s safety a priority without placing an intolerable burden on businesses and other sites that run almost no risk of being the scene of fatal fires.