CLUB FIRE

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal, Jul/Aug 2004 by Heslin, Thomas E

'WHO DIED AND WHY' SERVES AS FOCUS AFTER 100 PERISH

Fire broke out inside a crowded bar south of Providence on the night of Feb. 20, 2003. Within six minutes, the flames caused enough death and destruction to set the agenda for The Providence Journal for more than a year.

The Station nightclub fire allegedly started when the tour manager for a California rock band set off fireworks to open its act. A video of the fire show sparks ignited common packing foam that had been put up around the stage to contain the club's sound from the neighborhood in the town of West Warwick.

Reports reveal the fire raced toward the crowd, and the collective rush to escape ended in a deadly scrum at the nightclub's front door.

A television cameraman, who happened to be recording that night at The Station, captured much of the horror.

In the days after the fire, waves of emotion washed over Rhode Island - the smallest state in the United States and one famous for its few degrees of separation. Grieving families awaited word of identification of missing loved ones. The fire killed 100 people, and injured more than 200 others - many seriously.

The Providence Journal moved dozens of reporters and editors to the story. The Journal's library database shows that the newspaper published 396 stories, and 380 photos in the first 30 days of coverage.

The numbers, of course, tell only part of the story.

All fire, all the time

Executive Editor Joel P. Rawson condensed the fire's many complexities into a central question: Who died in that fire and why?

The assignment editors came to rely on another simple mantra in balancing the newspaper's competing demands with the commitment to fire coverage: "All fire, all the time."

I joined a cadre of Journal editors directing the coverage. They included Carol Young, the deputy executive editor; Sue Areson, city editor; Jean Plunkett and Karen Bordeleau, assistant city editors; Jeanne Edwards, West Bay regional editor; John Kostrzewa, business editor; and Jack Khorey, metro regional editor.

Every step of the planning and assignment process involved the photo and graphics staff - headed by Michael Delaney, managing editor/visuals, and Scott Kingsley, assistant managing editor/visuals; projo.com, headed by Sean Polay, who was the news and operations manager; and Andrea Panciera, the site editor.

The Journal organized reporters and editors into teams to focus on topics such as code enforcement; polyurethane foam; burn medicine and psychology; civil litigation; the criminal investigation; business practices; and the developing political furor over fire-safety legislation at the Rhode Island state-house.

Virtually every member of the staff contributed to the coverage of the story in some way. By year's end, The Journal had published 196 front-page stories about the fire.

Inside the club

State officials had announced the names of lhe people killed in the fire, but they would not divulge any official roster of the survivors or give an official estimate of how many people had been inside the nightclub.

Our newsroom set out to develop the information independently.

Paul Parker, the Journal's computer-assisted reporting expert, designed a database to compile all the known names of survivors gathered from interviews and unofficial sources.

Then, in what was likely the most ambitious reporting project in the history of The Providence Journal, more than 60 reporters were assigned to find those people, interview them, confirm their presence at The Station and find out who else might have been there with them.

On Sept. 21, The Journal published a list of 412 people who were confirmed to have been inside the burning nightclub. Publication of the list prompted other survivors to contact the paper, increasing the count. By the fire's anniversary, the tally was 440.

The legal capacity of the club was 404.

Computer-assisted reporting

The reporters on the survivor project had been given uniform data-collection forms to use in their interviews. Survivors were asked to explain where they and their friends were inside the club when the fire started, and how they got out.

The results showed specifically where the crowd had become trapped, and allowed the newspaper to explain how differences in the layout of the building or in the number of people allowed inside might have changed the outcome.

Parker reviewed several crowd-evacuation software programs before settling on Simulex. Using information collected in u\e Journal's database, along with the video recording of the fire, public documents and interviews with experts, he constructed the computer model of the nightclub and a statistical profile of the people inside.

Parker's work showed that relatively simple structural changes or adherence to the capacity set by the fire marshal might have saved dozens - if not all - of those who died.

He also interviewed a state fire official, who said the state fire code, even in the updated version passed after The Station fire, would allow the same dangerous layout that trapped people inside the nightclub.