A couple creates a memorial on a truck still at the fire site.
Posted on 02/22/2003 10:50:27 PM PST by Dane
Friends lost during frantic escape
Eight of Robin Petrarca's friends are on the list of people missing from the club.
02/23/2003
BY KATE BRAMSON Journal Staff Writer
WEST WARWICK -- There's no doubt in Robin Petrarca's mind that she got out of The Station because she knows the building.
She's one of the regulars who frequented the club. About a dozen or 18 of them would sit at the same section of the bar each time -- where they had a view of the stage.
Petrarca, a 44-year-old Warwick resident, knew exactly where the club's four exits were. She and her friends were sitting five feet from the exit near the bar.
As soon as the sparkler ignited, her friend John Schmidt, of West Warwick, turned to his wife, Kerrie Beers; Petrarca; and friend Stephanie Zannella of North Providence and said: "Get out now."
Schmidt literally pushed Zannella out the door and grabbed his wife by her coat. But by the time he got out, "he had her coat but not Kerrie," Petrarca said on her cell phone from Crowne Plaza.
"Only because we know where the door is, she [Kerrie] grabbed the door jamb and pushed her way out," Petrarca said.
Within about 30 seconds, the lights were out, Petrarca said. She put her hand on the wall, grabbed the door jamb and got pushed out. She got twisted around and came out the door backward, head first down the stairs.
"So many people were just pushing that bodies started coming down the stairs on top of me," she said.
Those bodies falling on Petrarca were people who survived, she said. One man started pulling people off her, and then her brother came out, saw her on the ground and lifted a man off her.
By the time she got onto the street, flames were billowing out of the club, and the bar manager -- a man named Kevin -- was screaming for a flashlight. Someone handed him a flashlight, and he went back in with it, "screaming for people to come out," she said.
Petrarca spent Friday searching for eight friends. By Saturday, most of them were still on the missing list, she said.
"None of them so far is on the confirmed, identified bodies [list]," she said, starting to cry. "Reality tells us we're not going to see them anymore."
It's the people who were helping others who didn't make it, she believes.
"These were the guys who were helping everybody out. I know it," she said. "We lost some really good people."
Petrarca said she didn't want to share their names because their families were still waiting for news on those missing,
"We know who's in the hospital and we know what conditions those people are in, but the ones who are on the missing list . . . I don't think we can even hold out hope," she said. "We know that."
SHEER CHANCE is the reason Glenn Therriault, an Attleboro resident who works in The Providence Journal's production facility, got out of the club. He had been to only one other show at The Station -- Dokken played there maybe a year ago, he said. So it wasn't as if he knew his surroundings well.
Therriault was there Thursday night because Great White is his favorite band. He went with a friend who lives across the street, Walter Rich, who was among the missing Saturday afternoon.
He thought the club would be too small for Great White because of the band's popularity. He turned to escape when the fire from the sparklers reached the ceiling. That was the last time he saw Rich.
Therriault said he knew there was an exit to the right of the stage. But he never considered trying to use it because he remembered from the Dokken concert that club announcers made it sound as if that exit were upstairs, not an escape route he wanted to tackle.
As he turned and headed away from the stage, Therriault dropped to the ground -- remembering the advice of how to protect yourself in a fire -- but he couldn't crawl because of broken bottles on the floor.
Everything was black, he said. But from his vantage point on the ground, Therriault caught a glimpse of the bottom of a doorway. He knew he had to get to that door.
"When I tried to get up, I couldn't get right up," he said. "There were people pushing. It was definitely a struggle to get up."
That's when he thought: I'm not going to make it out of here.
And he thought about his wife, Cristina Therriault, who is pregnant with their first child.
"When I thought I wasn't going to make it, that's all I could think of is my wife alone -- that and a million other things that were going through my mind," he said.
But he did get up.
"Once I did, I kept on walking," he said. "And I walked right out."
He wonders why this had to happen. He wonders what Rich's family is going to do.
"I know I'm OK but . . . Wally's situation . . . I'm more concerned about that than I am about myself," he said. "It's like: What's going to happen now? It's a million questions."
More tragic accounts of that fateful night. Prayers to the victims and victims families.
A couple creates a memorial on a truck still at the fire site.
The death toll here is unlikely to rise from 97 except for deaths from those who are critically burned (about two dozen). Unfortunately, burn victims usually die from two days to a week after being burned due to their immune system being overwhelmed by infection and their organs shutting down.
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