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

by thickening, head-level smoke and a throng of increasingly concerned patrons. A few yards behind him in the pack, Erin Pucino was no longer moving of her own volition but, rather, as part of a viscous flow of bodies squeezing between Andrea Mancini’s angled ticket counter partition and its opposing wall. As the smoke changed in seconds from gray to black, people inside the club believed that all lighting had suddenly been switched off. In fact, the smoke from the burning hydrocarbon-based plastic foam was so perfectly opaque that no light from the ceiling fixtures could penetrate it. The lights remained on. They simply could not be seen from twelve inches away.
    With the force of surging bodies behind her completely offset by the resistance of those in front of her, Pucino floated suspended in an inky cauldron, where collective fear increased exponentially with each degree of rising heat. It occurred to her that leaving the club would not just be difficult. It could well be impossible.

CHAPTER 10

    THIS WAY OUT
    WEST WARWICK PATROLMAN MARK KNOTT had been standing by the ticket counter with fellow officer Anthony Bettencourt when Great White took the stage. Just as the band launched into its opening song, Knott’s radio crackled: he was needed at a domestic disturbance elsewhere in town. The officer responded by heading out The Station’s double front doors.
    Knott paused on the concrete landing outside, bracing himself against the bitter February chill, when his radio picked up Bettencourt’s voice from inside the club. “The Station’s on fire,” radioed his colleague with surprising calm. Knott turned and reopened the front doors, where he was met by a human tide that bowled him back out the doors, over the railing of the club’s steps and onto the hood of a car below. Seconds later he managed to key his radio microphone and shout the word, “Stampede!”
    There were myriad reasons why people found themselves inside The Station when the firestorm was unleashed. Some, like Fairfield Inn housekeepers Tina Ayer and Jackie Bernard, had made their way onto Jack Russell’s guest list through happenstance. Others, like Steve Mancini, Keith Mancini, Tom Conte, and Al Prudhomme, were members of an opening band, Fathead. Still others, like Steve’s wife, Andrea, who worked the club’s ticket desk, were earning a night’s pay. But most were simply there to hear Great White and have a good time.
    Whatever different plans they may have had in entering the club that night, most shared the same idea when it came to leaving it in a hurry. They headed for the door they’d come in by — the front entrance. For some it would prove their deliverance; for others, a most unfortunate decision.
    Al and Charlene Prudhomme were Station regulars. Fathead’s drummer Al had played at the club for ten years and once even considered buying The Station from Howard Julian, until Charlene vetoed the idea. The night of Great White’s appearance, Fathead was the first of three bands to play. During the second band’s set, Prudhomme stood with bouncer Scott Vieira near the band room and the stage door to the right of the stage.
    As Trip struck its set-up and Great White prepared to take the stage, CharlenePrudhomme found her husband down front near the speakers through which recorded music was blaring. “I love you and all, but after seventeen years of your music, I just can’t take the noise down here,” she shouted in his ear. “I’m standing near the back.” And with that she made her way through the dense crowd (Charlene hated the feeling of people pressing at her back) to the area adjacent to Andrea Mancini’s ticket desk, alongside Patrolman Bettencourt, where she remained standing until Great White’s show. Charlene knew Andrea well because their husbands played together in Fathead.
    Seconds after Great White’s gerbs ignited, Charlene noticed orange on the wall behind their white sparkles. She grabbed the policeman’s arm