Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (26 page)

The Cowesett Inn was a great place to get out of the cold on the night of February 20, 2003. Across the street from The Station, the restaurant bore little resemblance to its shabby neighbor. Polished oak and brass dominated its furnishings. That night, two drunks slumped on its comfortably upholstered barstools.

They sat with backs to the front door, but the mirror in front of them reflected all who entered the restaurant. What they saw in that mirror at 11:10 p.m. would put an abrupt end to their quiet reverie. The Cowesett Inn was about to become a field hospital.

As he stepped from his fire truck, Captain Kevin Sullivan was immediately met by a throng of walking wounded. He gathered as many as he could and called for them to follow him. Walking backward and motioning with his
hands, Sullivan led his charges across the street and through the front doors of the Cowesett Inn — a Pied Piper in turnout gear. He would later learn that West Warwick police sergeant Thomas Hannon had secured the restaurant for use as the primary triage area.

The two drunks looked up as still-smoking burn victims stumbled through the doors reflected in the bar mirror. They were followed by a phalanx of shocked, bleeding, and burned victims, many with arms outstretched, like extras from
Night of the Living Dead
. This group was soon joined by even more seriously burned victims who had been loaded into the open cargo beds of pickup trucks in The Station’s parking lot, two and three at a time, to be transported to the triage area. Once all were inside, it would take a Herculean effort to create order amidst bedlam, prioritize treatment, and arrange for transportation to hospitals. Fortunately, several professionals rose to the challenge.

Warwick rescue captain Peter Ginaitt, forty-two years old, was a twenty-year veteran of that city’s fire department, with more than the usual firefighter’s credentials. A graduate of the University of Rhode Island with a degree in resource development and landscape architecture, Ginaitt had earned additional degrees in fire science and nursing from the Community College of Rhode Island. In his spare time, the
RN
was also a Rhode Island state representative. But none of that could have fully prepared him for what he was about to experience as his Warwick Rescue 4 rig sped the two miles to the Station blaze.

When Ginaitt saw a bright glow in the sky, visible over a mile away, he thought, “This fire is just cranking.” Ginaitt figured he’d get “five to six burn victims on this one,” but when he got there it was worse than he could have imagined. His rescue vehicle had not made it all the way to the fire when a man flagged down his truck, seeking help for a badly injured woman sitting in his car. Ginaitt’s partner, Todd Berthiaume, stayed to bandage the woman while Ginaitt proceeded to the Cowesett Inn, where a crowd of injured had gathered.

Ginaitt and Fire Captain Leo Kennedy of Cranston immediately took over triage there. As they walked through the restaurant, Ginaitt would find “one person with burns so severe that I’d think that was as bad as it could get,” he recalled. “Then, I’d find one worse.” Ginaitt and Kennedy had only seconds to assess each of the victims and assign them to the color-coded areas (red — critical; yellow — serious; green — mild) that they’d designated within the restaurant. The two men understood, perhaps counterintuitively, that many persons screaming loudest in pain could safely be transported
later than others who lay silent. If victims were screaming, they weren’t yet in shock. And if their burns caused excruciating pain, they were likely second-degree, not nerve-destroying third-degree burns.

Ginaitt looked for telltale signs of inhalation injury like singed nasal or facial hair — an injury that could compromise respiration within thirty minutes. Mostly, he reassured each victim, telling them, “I won’t forget you.” Many told Ginaitt that others were hurt worse than they — “just don’t forget me,” they’d add.

Thirty-four rescue units and twenty-three private ambulances responded to the disaster. The first rescue to pull up at the fire itself was from the Hopkins Hill Fire Department in Coventry, Rhode Island. It was immediately surrounded by about fifty people seeking medical attention, many screaming in pain. As soon as the truck’s rear door opened, four victims scrambled inside.

West Warwick dispatchers turned to the Yellow Pages to call private ambulance services, all of which sent crews without charge that night. When rescue vehicles began to jam Cowesett Avenue between The Station and the Cowesett Inn, police wisely diverted all other rigs to a staging area in the parking lot of the Galaxie Restaurant, a block away. Crews were instructed to remain there with their units until summoned to the Cowesett Inn for transport.

Ginaitt and Kennedy not only triaged victims; they triaged first responders.
EMT
s with intermediate (“cardiac”) or advanced (“paramedic”) certifications were generally allowed to stabilize and transport the most seriously injured.
EMT
“basics” transported “greens” and “yellows” in groups of two or three per vehicle; others were tasked with searching parked cars and nearby lots for additional victims (they found several). Ginaitt performed yet another triage of his brethren, this one subjective, as soon as they took in the scene at the Cowesett Inn. No “reds” were entrusted to a terrified
EMT
, regardless of his or her certification.

It didn’t hurt that Rhode Island is such a small state. Ginaitt and Kennedy recognized first-rate rescue personnel from previous statewide drills and training. Four
RNS
from the neighborhood offered their services at the triage center. A rescue captain immediately vouched for their skills. The nurses started
IV
s and dispensed morphine “like water.” There was definitely room for them at the inn.

The system worked remarkably well. In an hour and a half, crews transported 188 people to hospitals and burn centers around the state and nearby New England. None died at the triage center or during transport. That only four of all those transported died later (days, weeks, or months later) is a
testament not only to the superb hospital care they received, but to the remarkable quality of triage and transport from the scene.

The Cowesett Inn served not only as a medical triage center that night, but also as a temporary command and information center for the rescue/recovery effort. Police took over back rooms and offices, designating the restaurant’s phone number as an information hotline. They took witness statements and missing-person information in its rear booths. A temporary Red Cross victims’ service center occupied another area. Restaurant owner James Paolucci and his staff kept ice, water, and food flowing for victims and workers throughout the night and into the following day.

One somewhat disquieting feature of the Cowesett Inn was a large
TV
that loomed over injured victims, caregivers, and even victims’ family members who began to gather there. It remained tuned to
CNN
, which continuously broadcast video from . . . the Station fire. A poignant reminder of our wired world, the programming functioned as a feedback loop for participants in the event, shaping their reactions to the tragedy even as it reported them.

As far as the firefighting was concerned, the first phase, rescue, ended in about forty minutes. The second phase, recovery, lasted from midnight until the following noon. Once it was determined that no further survivors remained in the building, a plan was devised for removal of bodies. The protocol was designed to limit any first responder’s total exposure to the horror. It worked imperfectly, at best.

At 11:30 p.m., the West Warwick Police Department called the Rhode Island medical examiner’s office to advise that a “Mass Casualty Incident” was under way, so that
ME
personnel could respond to the scene and prepare to receive a large number of casualties. Investigator Jay Kingston took the call. With bushy blond hair and stocky frame, Kingston, forty-two years old, had not intended to go into the body business as a career. But, like many state employees, he found himself in a succession of positions where on-the-job training was the rule. One of the job skills Jay picked up as an investigator for the
ME
’s office was a healthy skepticism. His first reaction was to call the Rhode Island State Police to confirm that the “mass casualty” report was not a prank. If only.

His next call was to Rhode Island’s chief state medical examiner, Dr. Elizabeth Laposata. Unlike television coroners, Laposata had an unusual practice: she refused to visit crime or accident scenes. So, despite no fewer than five telephone calls that night from her investigator, from West Warwick police
chief Peter Brousseau, and from Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency executive director Albert Scappaticci, Dr. Laposata never once appeared on the scene. (Interviewed later, Laposata said she did not recall any calls from Brousseau and Scappaticci.)

Instead, only one investigator from the
ME
’s office, Jay Kingston, responded, accompanied by two hearses and drivers from Ocean State Transfer, the private service normally contracted by the state to assist in body removals. Kingston’s understanding was that twenty to thirty individuals had lost their lives. He intended to carefully record the location of each body within the building, segregate personal effects found with each, and accurately document chain of custody for all possible evidence being moved from the crime scene; however, it soon became apparent that the elements, and sheer scale of carnage, would thwart that. On the third body tag, his Sharpie marker froze in the bitter cold. It was downhill from there. Kingston worked without relief or
ME
supervision for seventeen straight hours, struggling with multiple simultaneous recoveries, cold-stiffened body bags, frozen bag zippers, insufficient body bags, plastic gloves unsuitable for subfreezing use, and multiple frozen cameras. A policeman was pressed into service to record the location of bodies. Transportation of the dead was improvised using the two hearses, four ambulances with volunteer crews, vans from the West Warwick Department of Public Works, and a police bus. Drivers of most of these vehicles were untrained in body transport and, to put it mildly, unaccustomed to such distressing circumstances.

Kingston was not joined by an additional investigator until 1 p.m. the following day, and then only to drop off more body bags. As a result, efforts to accurately document the locations of particular bodies within the club were impaired, and victims’ personal effects commingled.

When Kingston first arrived at the club location, he was directed by firefighters to a makeshift morgue area that had been set up to the right side of the club in the parking lot. There, seven victims were laid out under a tarpaulin. When Kingston lifted the tarp, he was sure that the first body was that of a close friend. This was, after all, Rhode Island. Firefighters looked on in puzzlement as the investigator rolled up the man’s pants legs. Neither calf bore his friend’s distinctive tattoos.

A flood of relief washed over Kingston — but was soon displaced by horror as he turned to the front entranceway of the club. In that small space, according to Kingston, bodies were intertwined “at least five deep.” Firefighters were using ropes and rescue belts to separate the corpses, many of which were fused to the floor or to each other by the heat. Skin slippage made their handling extremely difficult, requiring that many bodies be removed from
the building on backboards before they could be bagged. After each extrication, the firefighters paused while a chaplain spoke a short prayer. Removal of thirty-one victims from the front hallway proceeded in this manner.

Just past the ticket desk, another nine bodies were recovered; within the east end of the atrium, nineteen. The dart room, kitchen, and storage room yielded twenty more. Efforts continued throughout the following morning. After ninety-five bodies had been removed, firefighters thought they had found them all. However, hours later, when a roof section was lifted from the office area using heavy machinery, a ninety-sixth victim was discovered.

Consistent with preferred protocol for mass casualties, it was intended that no firefighter would have to remove more than one body. Based on an assumption that there were probably thirty victims inside, teams of four firefighters were queued up and sent into the collapsed wreckage to remove a single victim, then proceeded to a “rehab” area (to assess their physical and emotional status) immediately thereafter. However, the process of separating the charred corpses was more exhausting and time-consuming than anticipated. The number of victims grew with each passing hour. Bodies often proved difficult to load intact into body bags. Masks with “odor distraction,” worn by all, were insufficient to block the smell of burned flesh. After debriefing by Critical Incident Stress Management personnel, extraction teams were sent back into the wreckage multiple times — some, as many as five.