"The Station" floor plan: No wonder

[EastKyFF]

I got this off CNN.com. I'm no fire inspector, but:

-The "stage left" exit was probably blocked by fire once people realized they should leave.
-The main entrance was obviously flooded, as we all saw.
-The exits behind the bar would seem impassable, given the obstructions that appear to be there.
-Anybody in the bathroom area had no chance.

There are obvious problems with a fire code that lets this pass inspection. No wonder so many died, and I would amplify my earlier praise for WWFD for saving so many under conditions even worse than we initially thought.

[Grit76]

The arrangement of exits is good on that diagram, if they all were unobstructed, if they were of adequate capacity, if they were marked properly, etc. I realize there are alot of "ifs" there.

Codes anticipate that an exit may be blocked by the incident; that is why 2 or more required.

Finally, I have to echo the good rescue work by the FD's involved. Shows that when it comes down to it, the first responders have to deal with whatever deficiencies others have caused. I always thought that almost every time I rolled, it was due to some human stupidity at some level.

[axeboy6]

Does anyone know the size of the biulding/room? I have doubts about the occupant load being 300.

[CollegeBuff]

I think it's about 30x60, give or take a few.

The one thing I can't figure out is how my friend's fiance still managed to get trapped inside. He was the bassist for Fathead, the band who opened for Great White. The Station is the only club Fathead ever played- Keith had to know the place inside out and backwards, including the rear stage door he would've been near since he was packing up their equipment. We'll probably never know......

[axeboy6]

I'm not sure what fire code R.I. uses, but by the Uniform code, a 30 x 60 room should have had an occupant load in the 250 range if classified as a dance floor, and only around 120 otherwise. If the place had exceeded it's posted 300, well, just another link in the chain of events I guess.

[ThNozzleman]

Once the "mad rush" to escape the fire was on, the doors probably became clogged or "bottle-necked". You might as well closed the doors and chained them shut. I once experienced this to a degree at a football game. There was no emergency...just a bunch of nuts trying to rush the field after a game. The people first through the gate could not keep up with the pressure from behind and got stuck. I was briefly trapped in the crush of about a thousand people (or so it seemed) and it wasn't funny.

[IJHumberson]

EastKyFF, I have to agree with Grit76, the floor plan appears to meet NFPA 101 (which is what is adopted by Rhode Island). For a 1800 square feet area, the Life Safety Code would indicate an occupant load of 258 persons (and THAT's using 1 person per 7 square feet for concentrated use without fixed seating). Additionally, the Life Safety Code allows the occupant load to be raised above that number so long as all other aspects of the code are met based on the higher number. I'm figuring that the 300 number was arrived at because that would be the magic number that would have kicked in the sprinkler requirement. If the doors at the 4 different exits on the plan were 36-inch doors with the front door being a pair of 36-inch doors, the egress capacity would have been in the neighborhood of 825 occupants! Until last night I couldn't figure out how so few of the people made it out of that incident unharmed. On "60 Minutes II" last night they had a lot of video from outside the building and some from just inside the doors as the fire was developing headway - the thing that was painfully obvious was that almost everyone started for the front door and the smoke banked down so quickly that, once that door got blocked by the crush of people, there was no chance of finding the other exits. Tragic - very tragic.

[CollegeBuff]

I know the front doors were jammed, but Keith was near the BACK, and he KNEW exactly where the back door was. He couldn't possibly have played that club every week and not known. Other people got out the back- where was he.....