Real Lifeisco Inferno At least 60 people are feared dead and some 150 others injured following a fire that swept through a Rhode Island nightclub after a rock band's pyrotechnics display,authorities say. Fire Chief Charles Hall told reporters up to 200 people had been in the Station nightclub at a concert by heavy metal band Great White when the blaze started on Thursday night. As of 10:00 a.m. EST (3:00 a.m.), Hall confirmed the death toll was at 39-- most either burned to death or died of smoke inhalation -- and said it could continue to rise. But Wolfgang Bauer, manager of the town of West Warwick, said he feared at least 60 people had either suffocated or been burned or trampled to death in the inferno. "I expect the toll to go over 60," he told reporters.Hall said that many people may have died because they were unfamiliar with the venue and its fire exits. "People were new to the club. As is human nature, they tried to get back out the way they came in," he said. Broken beer bottles, mismatched shoes and a burned denim jacket lay outside the charred clubon Friday morning. 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. Bauer declined to speculate about a cause, but cited television footage "that evidently showed the pyrotechnics going off and the fire starting." Hall said investigators were trying to determine why the club had burned so quickly. PYROTECHNICS EYED Witnesses said a flash fire erupted about 11 p.m. on Thursday (4:00 a.m. on Friday) at the club, about 15 miles (24 km) 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 10 feet 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 December 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 on Friday 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 criticallyin injured and at least 30 were said to be in serious condition. Kent Hospital, about 3 miles (5 km) 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.
If I were in America I don't think that I would go clubbing at the minute like, far too any dodgy thing's happening at the minute.
How spooky, I'm just listening to an old jules set from Slinky, time to burn, Storm. is just coming in
