At least 85 people died and more than 160 others were injured in a fire that swept through a Rhode Island nightclub after a rock band's pyrotechnics display, authorities said yesterday.
Officials told reporters some 200 people had been in the Station nightclub at a concert by heavy metal band Great White when the blaze started on Thursday night, and they feared the death toll would climb further.
"Now it's at 85 and there's more. How many more? We don't know," said West Warwick Town Manager Wolfgang Bauer.
Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri said he did not recall a disaster of greater magnitude in the state's history, and said the investigation was focusing on the use of pyrotechnics in the small wooden building that was not required by law to have a water sprinkler system.
"There was no business putting off pyrotechnics in that building. This didn't need to happen - it shouldn't have happened," Carcieri told reporters after he cut short a trip to Florida to survey the damage.
"This is a real disaster. This building went up so fast. Nobody had a chance from what the building looks like," the governor said.
The disaster hit hard in Rhode Island, a tight-knit state with just over one million inhabitants.
"They say that in the world there's six degrees of separation. In Rhode Island, it's more like one and a half degrees," said Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch.
The Rhode Island blaze occurred just days after 21 people were killed in a stampede at a Chicago nightclub when they tried to escape pepper spray used to break up a fight and were crushed behind blocked doors, officials said.
Witnesses said a flash fire erupted about 11 p.m. on Thursday (0400 GMT yesterday) at the club, about 24 kilometres southwest of Providence, the state's capital, during a pyrotechnics display at the start of the concert.
Several witnesses said the pyrotechnics had ignited a foam backing on a wall near the stage.
"It was like a big sparkler that set off the foam. Within 30 seconds it was 3 metres tall," said Jack Rezendes of Jamestown, Rhode Island, an audience member who escaped by breaking and climbing through a window.
"I saw everyone going to one spot to get out and I went around and broke out a window and climbed through it."
Hall said the club had no license for pyrotechnic displays. He said there were no sprinklers in the building, but it was too small to require them.
The Station had passed its fire code compliance as of Dec. 31, 2002, its fire exits were working, and it had a capacity of 300 people, Hall said.
Great White's lead singer, Jack Russell, told Reuters that Ty Longley, one of the five-member group's guitarists, had not left the club with the others and was still missing yesterday morning.
Russell, who tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the fire with his water bottle while on stage, said he had heard accounts of bodies piling up shortly after the fire broke out.
"I spoke with the singer from the opening act, who said there were bodies on top of bodies and people trying to drag people out the front door. I went out the back," he said.
Great White, which dates back to the early 1980s, was once nominated for a Grammy Award for its song "Once Bitten, Twice Shy."
Victims were taken to hospitals, some as far away as Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts. At least 27 were critically injured and at least 30 were said to be in serious condition.
Kent Hospital, about 5 kilometres from the club, said it received 54 patients with injuries ranging from lacerations to first-, second- and third-degree burns.
"A lot of these patients are on ventilators. Some of them did have injuries consistent with trampling," said Selim Suner of Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, which admitted 43 patients.
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said it had taken eight patients, all in critical condition. Two were suffering from burns and two had respiratory problems; it was not immediately known what was wrong with the other four, a spokeswoman said.