The Station Nightclub FireFebruary 20, 2003 — West Warwick, Rhode Island

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On the night of February 20, 2003, the Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, held 462 people — more than its licensed capacity — for a concert by the rock band Jack Russell’s Great White. At 11:07 p.m., as the opening song began, the band’s tour manager, Daniel Biechele, set off a row of pyrotechnic gerbs on the stage. Their sparks ignited the polyurethane foam that had been fixed around the stage alcove as soundproofing.

The foam carried the fire across the walls and ceiling within seconds, and the low wooden building had no sprinkler system. Within six minutes the whole club was engulfed. Most of the crowd fled for the front door they had come in by, and the narrow entrance hallway jammed solid; other exits went unused or were held for the band. Of the 462 people inside, 100 were killed and 230 injured, most of the dead in and around the main entrance.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology investigated the fire as a national construction safety team study. Its report, NCSTAR 2, reconstructed the night minute by minute: the flammable foam made the fire grow faster than the crowd could escape, the air inside turned unsurvivable within minutes, and the building’s exits could not discharge the audience in time. NIST recommended sprinklers for nightclubs and similar venues, strict control of combustible interior finishes such as foam, and stronger requirements for exits and crowd management.

Biechele pleaded guilty in 2006 to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to fifteen years with four to serve; he was released in 2008, some of the victims’ families having supported his parole. The club’s owners, brothers Michael and Jeffrey Derderian, pleaded no contest: Michael received the same sentence as Biechele, and Jeffrey a sentence of community service. Civil claims against the band, the foam makers and others were settled for a total of about $176 million.

Rhode Island rewrote its fire code in the fire’s aftermath into one of the toughest in the nation — sprinklers required in nightclubs, flammable foam banned, indoor pyrotechnics tightly restricted — and national model codes moved the same way for places of assembly. A permanent memorial, Station Fire Memorial Park, opened on the site of the club in May 2017.