Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire by John Barylick Page A

wires to a battery terminal.
    Brian Butler, standing four rows back in the crowd, shoots video straight at the stage. His tape shows four pyrotechnic gerbs set off from the floor at center stage just in front of Powers’s drum alcove. Initially, the gerbs’ intensity produces a video whiteout. The camera’s iris takes a moment to adjust to the glare, but within five seconds of the gerbs’ ignition, small flames are visible on the foam-covered front corners of the drummer’s alcove where sparks from the gerbs have struck them. The flames, no larger than candles, start about five feet up the walls.
    At fifteen seconds post-ignition, the gerbs cease sparking, as designed. Butler swings the camera to his right, revealing the closed stage door and a darkened exit sign above it. Just three seconds later, the flames on the corners of the drummer’s alcove, previously candle size, are now over a foot high.
    At twenty seconds, David Filice is seen staring at two-foot-high flames tostage left. The foam at stage right is now being consumed by twin two-foot tongues of flame, which Ty Longley notices for the first time. Kendall and Russell remain unaware, strutting and playing on as flames race above the lintel of the drummer’s alcove and onto the upper proscenium arch.
    At twenty-three seconds, the video shows flames licking up inside the ceiling of the drummer’s alcove and leaping up the proscenium arch. Much of the crowd remains transfixed, still gesturing in “devil’s horns” fashion. However, one redheaded female in the front row clutches both hands to her head in dismay. She is among the first to appreciate that flaming walls are not part of the show. Over the next half minute the crowd’s demeanor will shift from festive, to curious, to terror-stricken.
    At twenty-five seconds post-ignition, Butler’s video clearly shows flames consuming the egg-crate foam three feet above the drummer’s alcove lintel. Filice looks back intently at drummer Powers, willing him to abandon his post in the alcove. Kendall and Russell remain oblivious of the growing peril.
    Twenty-six seconds after ignition of the gerbs, smoke fills the cathedral ceiling area over the dance floor and begins to billow beneath the dropped ceiling into the remainder of the club. Butler starts moving with his camera toward the main door.
    At twenty-eight seconds, formal-wear salesman and amateur bodybuilder Joe Kinan is seen on Butler’s tape turning to his longtime buddy, Karla Bagtaz. He wheels to his left toward the main door with Karla at his side. In a few seconds Kinan will take off his leather vest and wrap it around his friend to protect her.
    At the thirty-six-second mark, Butler’s camera is near the ticket booth, shooting straight toward the stage and its door. The stage door is now wide open, an exterior light illuminating the frigid blackness beyond. Great White suddenly stops playing. Russell finally notices the flames engulfing the west wall and utters his last words of the concert: “Wow. That’s not good.” A master of understatement, Russell.
    Forty-one seconds after Biechele ignited his pyro, Russell and Kendall are still seen onstage, Russell ineffectually splashing one wall with a water bottle. Fifty seconds after ignition, the building’s fire alarm is triggered, sounding a piercing horn and illuminating strobes around the club. At fifty-seven seconds, Dan Biechele, who had run offstage looking for an extinguisher, jumps back onstage briefly. Butler’s camera, always facing the stage, appears to stop in one location for eight to ten seconds, during which pause Erin Pucino, the Derderians’ long-suffering gas-station clerk, can be seen attempting to getpast the cameraman toward the door, her face contorted in the expression of Edvard Munch’s The Scream . Butler’s camera thereafter moves past the ticket desk and out the front doors in a wave of escaping patrons.

    When Brian Butler exited through the front doors he was trailed