CRANTON, R.I. — As mourning families girded for the bad news, a grim Gov. Donald Carcieri on Saturday began releasing names of some of the victims of Rhode Island’s deadly nightclub fire. And federal investigators began converging on the scene to determine who was to blame for the inferno that killed 96 concertgoers in minutes.
Carcieri said 81 victims from the blaze that consumed The Station music club late Thursday night are too badly burned for visual identification. Medical examiners have begun the painstaking process of using dental records to place names on the dead, he said.
“My whole focus is to get these bodies identified,” Carcieri said. “All these collateral things — the investigation, charges — we will do down the road.”
But even as the governor spoke from the National Guard armory here, a multipronged investigation of the fire that also left 185 injured — 44 of them critically — was under way.
Five teams of experts trained in examining bodies from explosions and catastrophes, such as the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City, arrived to assist Rhode Island coroners. Representatives from the U.S. Public Health Service to the National Institute of Standards in Technology to the Department of Health and Human Services assembled here to work with state and local authorities.
What is expected to be a lengthy and intensive effort will focus on whether the Great White rock band was authorized to set off a pyrotechnics display in a small, crowded nightclub, authorities said Saturday.
Officials also planned to question club owners Michael and Jeffrey Derderian about why apparently more than 350 people were packed into an area with a far smaller official capacity.
The nature of the explosives used as part of Great White’s opening act also must be explored, Special Agent James McNally of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said.
The band’s trademark pyrotechnics shot up “like a blowtorch,” said Jesse Botelho, 30, who escaped by throwing himself out a window. Acoustical curtains and insulation caught fire instantly, and within 30 seconds, witnesses said the room was so darkened by smoke that they could not see their own hands in front of them.
Visiting the site of the fire, ATF Agent McNally called it “the worst thing I have ever seen — just the amount of loss.”
Echoing this sentiment was Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who said: “I was just frankly taken aback because of the number of bodies that were taken out. I saw firefighters going by with their arms filled with body bags. I thought, ‘That’ll be all they need.’ And then they went back for more.”
State Attorney General Patrick Lynch would not speculate whether criminal charges would be brought. He refused to put a timetable on the investigation.
“My obligation is to make sure that the emotional tide doesn’t dictate the result,” he said.
