Book Club: Author John Barylick’s ‘Killer Show’ tells how the Station nightclub fire resulted in ‘America’s deadliest rock concert’

This interview had been edited for length and clarity.

Transcript:

Luis Hernandez: It was Feb. 20, 2003, when a fire broke out in the Station nightclub in West Warwick. The hard rock band Great White was performing when pyrotechnics lit part of the ceiling on fire, leading to a blaze that killed 100 people and injured many more. John Barylick was one of the lead attorneys in the wrongful death and personal injury cases of that tragedy. He later wrote the book, “Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire, America’s Deadliest Rock Concert.” It’s the February title for The Public’s Radio book club. Barylick joins me now to talk about the book. John, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate it. 

John Barylick: Good morning, Luis. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Hernandez: Just briefly, because you take us through the book, you take us through the story from the tragedy and then of course, the fight for justice afterwards. Describe how you lay out this story. 

Barylick: Well, the book is laid out generally chronologically. But rather than just be a presentation of the fire itself and only the fire – I found that that would be too exhausting for the reader, really too tense – the chapters are interspersed with, I guess what I would call lesson chapters on such things as fire science, burn medicine, the law and material science. It sounds kind of wonky, but it’s a good relief from the nonstop action of the fire itself. 

Hernandez: It was very hard to read, without a doubt. Why did you want to write this?

Barylick: I and my fellow attorneys felt, at the time we finished the civil litigation some seven years after the fire, that at that point in time we probably knew more about the details of this tragedy than anyone else. If it weren’t memorialized, memories would fade and lessons perhaps would be forgotten from the fire. So I felt a need to commit it to a book. And in retrospect, I’m glad that I did. 

Hernandez: Where were you when you first heard about the fire, and how did you hear about it?  

Barylick: I first heard, like most people, from television news. I was awaiting departure at a gate at T. F. Green Airport and I looked up at the monitor and looked at the news crawl, and it spoke of a nightclub fire in West Warwick. At that time, very little was known about the scope of the tragedy. They spoke of fears of many dead, but then as the morning wore on, the number increased and increased. So I made my business trip but turned around, and the phone was ringing by the time I got back. 

Hernandez: This story is about quite a few different people who played key roles in this. Let’s start with the owners, the owners of the Station nightclub. Briefly tell me who [are] Michael and Jeffrey Derderian?  

Barylick: Michael and Jeffrey Derderian were the owners of the Station nightclub at the time of the fire. They were responsible for planning the appearance by [lead singer] Jack Russell’s Great White. They both had day jobs. This was not their primary pursuit. By coincidence, Jeffrey Derderian was a TV news reporter who had, just days before, moved jobs from Boston to Rhode Island. By bizarre coincidence, he had a cameraman from his TV station in the club at the time of the fire because he wanted to do a feature on, of all things, nightclub safety. So we were fortunate, in a way, to have a second-by-second accounting in video of how the tragedy went down. 

Hernandez: And it did not take long for that fire to just erupt. You saw the flames on the wall and then it just erupted. 

Barylick: Yes, that footage was actually shown the night of the fire by a TV sharing arrangement among the news stations. So immediately people were seeing that scene from inside the club. We are fortunate, forensically, to have that means of reproducing what happened.  

Hernandez: Why did the fire blow up so quickly? Why did that building go up so fast? 

Barylick: One of the primary reasons was the substances that were on the walls. The Derderian brothers had glued an egg crate polyurethane foam to the entire side of the west side of the club, including the ceiling over the dance floor and the ceiling over the drummer’s alcove. This was a substance that was extremely flammable. It was completely unsuited for use as a building material. And it readily caught fire when exposed to the sparks from the band’s pyrotechnics. 

Hernandez: What is that for? What is it used for? 

Barylick: The foam is really cheap grade packing foam, the type that they put up on the walls. There is available fire retardant versions of that, but it was more expensive. That was not put up. 

Hernandez: Going back to what I said, it also describes these two brothers and the way they did business. They had no experience running a club. It’s also the way they did business, the way they handled their finances, the way they treated workers.

Barylick: The course of business for the Derderian brothers was one, frankly, valuing profit over safety and cutting corners where they could, whether it be stiffing a band that appeared there – a local band – or in not providing workers’ compensation insurance for their own employees, overcrowding the club on occasion, allowing pyrotechnics on multiple occasions. All these showed turning a blind eye toward safety and looking at the bottom line. 

Hernandez: Let’s bring another person into this story, former fire marshal Denis Larocque. Briefly tell us who is this man, and how he plays a role in this. 

Barylick: Every community in Rhode Island has a fire marshal who’s responsible for investigating fires as to their source and origin, but also in enforcing the state fire code. In West Warwick at the time, that man was Denis Larocque. He was a West Warwick firefighter, but he also carried a state badge, and that was as a deputy state fire marshal. It was his responsibility to see that the club and other places of public assembly in the town were up to code. In this, he unquestionably failed terribly.

Hernandez: What about the foam on the walls? What did he say about that? Why wouldn’t he have spotted that? As a fire marshal, I’m just imagining he should know what’s up there and what shouldn’t be up there. 

Barylick: Significantly, the club was inspected for renewal of its liquor license every November. The three years preceding the fire, either Larocque personally or his deputy in the fire department inspected the club, noted alleged deficiencies, and then noted that those deficiencies had been corrected. Never in the three years prior to the fire was the presence of flammable foam covering the entire west end of the club noted as a deficiency. 

Hernandez: Did he not see it? Or he just said he didn’t see it? 

Barylick: Well, we know he said he didn’t see it because under oath before a grand jury he was asked about this not subtle finding, and he simply said, “No, I just didn’t notice it.” He said he was distracted by another violation, which was a door that opened inward when it shouldn’t have, except the problem with that was that door had no doorknob and it was covered with the flammable foam. So he had to reach through a hole in the door in order to pull it inward, thereby reaching through the foam itself. So I found it most incredible that he did not notice it. 

Hernandez: I’m speaking with John Barylick, a lawyer and author of the book, “Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire, America’s Deadliest Rock Concert.” It’s the February pick for the Public’s Radio book club. 

John, only three people were found guilty: owners Jeffrey and Michael Derderian, we just talked about, as well as Dan Biechele, who’s the road manager of Great White. What’s Biechele’s role? 

Barylick: Dan Biechele’s role as road manager was that he was the fellow who physically hooked up the pyrotechnics and activated them. Interestingly, it was not his decision, ultimately, to use pyrotechnics, it was Jack Russell’s. Everything with this band, Jack Russell called the shots. 

Hernandez: The lead singer.

Barylick: The lead singer. Whether it was what food they were provided, what they were paid, and whether or not they used pyro. We know from other venues where they appeared that when the venue objected to the use of pyrotechnics, they simply didn’t use it. The fact that it was used here, and the fact that on the planning sheet for Great White it said “pyro?” and it was a “Y” for yes or a checkmark, suggests that in the pre-concert planning it was approved by the station. 

Hernandez: So Biechele and the Derderian brothers were charged with 100 counts of misdemeanor manslaughter. What sort of punishment could they have gotten and what did they actually get? 

Barylick: The civil cases and the criminal cases never reached trial. All were settled. The criminal cases were settled with guilty or no contest pleas by the only three individuals who were criminally indicted, and that was Daniel Biechele, the road manager for Great White, and the two club owners, the Derderian brothers. 

Hernandez: Did we learn anything from this? Did anything change that we could say this won’t happen again?

Barylick: I don’t think we can ever say with confidence it will never happen again, but there certainly have been changes in Rhode Island and in its sister states in modifying the fire codes to make it less likely this would happen. More importantly, enforcers locally and across the country are looking at places of public assembly with more vigor.

I present a lot before fire safety groups and fire chiefs conferences. In the audience are many firefighters. I say to them, in speaking with you, I often meet people who say, “I knew I was going to be a firefighter when I was 15 years old,” except not one of them has said, “You know, when I was 15, what I really wanted to do was code enforcement.” It’s not the sexy part of the job, but it’s the part of the job most professionals concede has more bang for the buck in terms of lifesaving. 

Hernandez: John, what are the lasting impacts of the tragedy? Is it the laws and regulations that we now have around venues and fire safety everywhere, but in Rhode Island, especially, right? I mean, things have gotten better?  

Barylick: Things have gotten better. In the wake of the Station fire, the Rhode Island fire code was amended to reduce the capacity of places of public assembly that are required to be sprinklered. The Station was not a sprinklered venue, and the outcome and the tragedy would have been much different had it been a sprinklered venue. The fire probably would have been knocked down in very short order with minimal injuries or loss of life. 

That venue, however, was what we call “grandfathered in,” because at the time it was built sprinklers weren’t required. Now, grandfathering, even under the old code, ends when a venue’s use or occupancy has been changed. Well, here we had a venue that went from a restaurant seating 50 people eventually to a nightclub with an occupancy of over 400 people. Now, to me, that’s a change of use or occupancy that should have triggered the end of grandfathering – that is, requiring it to be sprinkled. But once again, that’s an area that the fire marshal simply did not focus on.

Hernandez: You know, this is the anniversary and I’m wondering, after all these years, when this time of year comes around, what’s it like for you?  

Barylick: It’s still a reminder because I hear from what I loosely refer to as the Station fire family. That is people who were injured and survived or people who lost loved ones whom I came to meet either through my legal representation or writing the book. Even 20 years later, it’s the single formative experience of their life, and you can’t blame them. They always remind me how significant an event this was for them and for the state.

Hernandez: Has everything that you’ve been through – working with the families and then writing this book – has it changed the way you view entering any kind of venue?

Barylick: It certainly changed the way I view it. I’ve heard from so many readers that they never enter a club or a concert the same way having read the book. I urge people in the book and when I do presentations before fire safety and event safety groups, that everyone is their own best fire marshal, so when they enter a venue, it’s really up to them to check out the nearest exit and share that information with their friends. Just say, look if anything bad goes down, whether it’s a fire or a fight, that’s the exit we’re heading to without hesitation. 

Hernandez: John Barylick is the author of the book “Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire, America’s Deadliest Rock Concert.” It’s the February title for The Public’s Radio Book Club. You can learn more online at thepublicsradio.org/bookclub. John, I appreciate you talking with us about this because it’s not an easy conversation to have. Thank you so much. 

Barylick: Thank you. It’s my pleasure. 

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