Hello, this is your host, Jennifer Matarise, and welcome to disaster area.

Episode 6, the Station Nightclub Fire, February 20, 2003, 100 deceased, 230 injured.

It's a place where good bands go to die.

Stevens Scarpetti about the station nightclub years before the fire, as quoted in the book,

Killer Show.

The terrifying thing about the station nightclub fire is that it could happen anywhere.

It could happen any one of us.

You go to the bar that you always go to, you get some wings, you buy a beer, you're sitting

there with your friends having a good time, and then

something happens and you need to make an exit. But suddenly you realize that the sprinkler

system isn't working, or that the emergency doors are nailed shut for some reason, or it's very hard to see anything because there's smoke now.

And you suddenly realize that this bar that you thought that you knew is really hard to navigate around.

And you can't find your way out.

And that's the thing about the station night club. It was a place that had been in

Warwick, West Warwick, Rhode Island for years. The building at 2.11 Calasid Avenue had been there

for a very long time. And, you know, in a place like West Warwick, which is a working class, former mill town,

you know, it was the kind of little road house that people like to go to.

You know, it wasn't fancy.

It maybe looked like a death trap.

But you know what? You go with your friends. You have a beer. You throw some darts and you have a good time. The thing about West Warwick is that it's one of those towns where it's kind of known for sort of corruption and nepotism and crime in its government. There's a lot of that that goes around.

So you had things in its history like a departing mayor illegally paid himself $15,000 in

sick time and vacation pay, quote unquote. A school committee member pressured the principal

...