‘I never saw anything like it in my life’

THE veteran heavy metal band Great White took the stage in the packed nightclub to cheers and raised beers and launched into its first song, accompanied

Almost immediately, the ceiling caught fire. Within minutes, the entire club was engulfed in flames.

At first, many concertgoers didn’t realise anything was wrong and kept cheering, said TV cameraman Brian Butler, who happened to be filming in the nightclub. “I could see the reaction on other faces that they knew something wasn’t right,” Butler said.

At least 95 people were killed and more than 160 injured as patrons in The Station in West Warwick, about 15 miles from Providence, frantically tried to escape the inferno.

“People were trying to help others and people were smashing out windows, and people were pulling on people and nobody cared how many cuts they got, nobody cared about the bruises or the burns,” Butler said. “They just wanted out of the building.”

Butler kept his camera rolling after he squeezed through the club’s front door. Once outside, he ran around to the back, capturing thick black smoke and flames billowing from that doorway.

Robin Petrarca, aged 44, said the band had just started playing when the pyrotechnic sparklers began shooting toward the ceiling, igniting the roof and wall.

“I never saw anything like it in my life,” she said, wrapped in a blue blanket across the street from the fire.

She said she was within five feet of the door, but the billowing smoke was so thick, she couldn’t see the exit.

In the rush to escape, she fell and was trampled, but made it out moments later.

“I never knew a place could burn so fast,” she said.

“There was nothing they could do, it went up so fast.”

In the theatrical pyrotechnics business, the effects are called “gerbes”, from the French word for sparks. They are relatively simple contraptions, consisting of a powder charge inside a floor-mounted tube or pipe about an inch in diameter.

The charge is usually ignited by an electric spark that is triggered by remote control, shooting a tower of flame into the air. A metal additive in the charge, such as titanium or tungsten, gives the flame a sparkling effect.