The more than 300 people who attended the Great White concert at the Station Club in Rhode Island last Thursday night expected good music, good drinks and a good time. The last thing they expected was for the building to burst into flames from a pyrotechnic show gone awry and leave many of the concert-goers dead.
People now are throwing blame around in the nightclub investigation, with victims, authorities and club owners all trying to figure out how 96 people were killed and dozens hurt. Witnesses say at first people thought the blaze that started out on the ceiling was a part of the show. When it raged out of control, panic broke out from people trying to escape the fire, which engulfed the entire club in only three minutes.
According to the New York Times, members of the band insist they first obtained permission from the club to have their pyrotechnic show, but club owners vehemently deny allowing them to do this. The truth will be difficult to discern because in some previous shows Great White asked permission for the pyrotechnics, and in other shows the band went ahead without permission.
Whatever the outcome of the investigation into the Station club disaster turns out to be, this was a terrible tragedy. This recent nightclub incident follows the tragedy at a Chicago nightclub, where 21 people were trampled to death when a skirmish involving pepper spray caused panic.
These past two tragedies are not the only ones, however; nightclubs and bars have a history of unsafe buildings.
According to the Times, 87 people were killed in 1990 at the Happy Land club in the Bronx. Two years ago in Philadelphia, three women were killed and others hurt when a pier a nightclub was built on collapsed. In Kentucky, 165 people were killed in a fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in 1977. And perhaps the worse incident ever, 492 people were killed in a Boston nightclub fire in 1942.
Why are so many people getting killed and injured in nightclubs around the country? No one answer exists. In some cases, bars did not follow the maximum occupancy limit. In others, building inspectors overlooked missing code requirements and allowed clubs to stay open. In still other cases, the crowd’s uncontrollable hysteria was its demise.
It is a scary thought that we might not be safe when we go to public places. In the back of everyone’s mind, we all know crimes such as theft and murder could happen to any one when we go out. I think I speak for many when I say I rarely consider burning alive in a building somewhere as one of the dangers of going out.
If you think we are somehow immune to this here, think again. Remember the Bayou? It was destroyed almost completely by fire last year, and although luckily not many people were there at the time and those who were present escaped injury, Baton Rouge is not far away from becoming a national news story about the dangers of bar fires.
It may not be a daily occurrence, but we should be concerned with building safety. Should building codes be beefed up and their enforcement made stricter? Of course. There always will be people with money and people willing to take that money in order for a business to stay open.
Adults, teens, students, non-students, senior citizens — everyone — should take responsibility for their safety when in a public building. Do not blindly trust a club has taken all the possible precautions to protect you from death or injury. The Times reported the Station Club in Rhode Island did not even have fire sprinklers because it was an older building.
The next time you are in a public building anywhere, but especially a nightclub or a bar where darkness and drunkenness might impair reaction speed, locate where fire exits and fire extinguishers are beforehand. And if anything looks out of place, if fire exits appear to be blocked by something or there aren’t enough, then leave.
In today’s age of technology, these tragedies should not happen. We have enough to worry about; we don’t need the stress of wondering if we will be trampled or burned to death the next time we go out. Everyone, including building inspectors, building owners and the public, must begin to take extra precautions to ensure safety because obviously, the current situations are not working as well as they ought to.