Inspector didn't see club's fatal foam

A town official who inspected the Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., three months before a devastating fire swept through the building and killed 100 people told state investigators he had failed to notice that the club's walls and ceiling were covered with a highly flammable soundproofing material because he was busy checking on other fire safety violations.

Denis P. Laroque, West Warwick's fire marshal, said in an interview with investigators five days after the February 2003 fire that he had concentrated his inspection the prior November on the club's failure to fix a previously cited problem with an exit door, improperly mounted fire extinguishers, and an open gasoline can in the basement.

"Did you notice during your inspection if there was any foam around the stage area?" Laroque was asked by one of the two investigators.

"No, I did not," he responded.

The transcript of his interview was among approximately 3,000 pages of documents from the state's criminal investigation into the fire, the deadliest in Rhode Island's history, released yesterday by the office of Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch.

The documents, most of which were taken during searches by Rhode Island State Police from West Warwick Town Hall and the home office in Narragansett of Michael A. Derderian, co-owner of the nightclub, are a fraction of what will ultimately be released, now that the criminal investigation has been completed, according to Lynch's spokesman, Michael Healey.

Derderian, his brother and co-owner Jeffrey A. Derderian, and Daniel M. Biechele, the band manager who set off the fireworks that started the blaze, pleaded guilty to multiple charges of involuntary manslaughter. Biechele and Michael Derderian were sentenced separately to four years in prison, and Jeffrey Derderian was sentenced to 500 hours of community service.

However, no charges were brought against Laroque or other town officials who had inspected the building. Many families of fire victims bitterly complained that the town had been derelict in allowing the club to operate for more than two years with the flammable foam on its walls.

The Derderians had installed the foam in August 2000 in hopes of placating neighbors' complaints about loud music. However, once it was ignited by the fireworks, the foam material fueled the fire, allowing it to spread quickly and engulf the nightclub in flames and thick black smoke within three minutes.

Healey said yesterday that the evidence accumulated against the local officials was not enough to warrant prosecution under Rhode Island law, which extends immunity unless the officials are shown to have acted "with malice" or "in bad faith."

"I'm not defending the statute, just pointing out the legal hurdle we had to overcome," Healey said. Laroque did not return phone calls to his office and home.

Release of the documents was prompted by requests made by the Globe, the Associated Press, and the Providence Journal.

Among the items taken from Michael Derderian's home and cited in the documents were handwritten notes that showed the nightclub had planned on selling 700 tickets for the concert the night of the fire, which featured the band Great White. The nightclub's legal capacity was 404, according to town records.

Also released was the one-page inspection report that Laroque made after inspecting the wood-framed club in November 2002. Laroque cited the nightclub for nine safety violations, including exit signs not properly lighted, broken ceiling panels near one exit door, fire extinguishers not properly mounted or situated, and overdue inspection of the fire protection system by a private firm.

However, in recounting that inspection, Laroque told investigators that he was most bothered by the Derderians' failure to fix one of the two doors at the rear of the stage that needed to be opened to exit the club.

The inside door opened inward, which was a violation of the state's fire code that Laroque had cited in his 2001 inspection. To resolve the situation, the Derderians had removed the inside door, but at some point the door, which was also covered with the flammable soundproofing, had been reinstalled.

"I really got upset that someone would reinstall something that we had already cited them for," Laroque told investigators on Feb. 25, 2003. "My next stop was . . . to speak with the bartender about who reinstalled the door." Although he wasn't questioned about his return visit, Laroque's report shows that all nine of the problems, including the problem of the inward-swinging door, were remedied.

However, on the night of the fire, according to an affidavit by State Police Detective Sergeant Keith C. Azverde, the door, lacking any knob to open it, had been remounted on its hinges to deaden the sound of the rock band.

Whether the problem with the door prevented patrons from escaping the fire is unknown.

Stephen Kurkjian can be reached at kurkjian@globe.com.

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, the surname of former West Warwick Fire Marshal Denis P. Larocque was misspelled in a Nov. 30 City & Region story about the release by the Rhode Island attorney general's office of documents from the Station nightclub fire investigation.)