What We Are About To Do Here Is What The Good Lord Would Call A Cleansing of the Wicked. I Call It A Good Old Fashioned Texas Ass Kicking.
Posted on 05/10/2006 2:41:33 PM PDT by andrew2527
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A former rock-band manager whose pyrotechnics caused a nightclub fire that killed 100 people was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison.
Daniel Biechele, 29, could have gotten as much as 10 years behind bars under a deal he struck with prosecutors in February, when he pleaded guilty to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter.
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The owners have plead not guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
Looks like they found their scape goat.
The owners have plead not guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
Were the exits blocked or locked.....please re-fresh my memory
Yep. Scapegoat. For now at least.
He did it lots of times before. Owners this time had flammable materials and locked emergency exits.
I've watched the video a few times, taken by one of the audience members, of the start of that show. The incendiaries were far higher than the height of the ceiling, meaning burning particles were streaming into the ceiling surfaces. He HAD to know that ahead of time, if he ever lit them off before.
This guy is an idiot for lighting those kinds of fireworks indoors with such a low ceiling REGARDLESS of the surface covering. Granted, if it had been stainless steel, no problem. But for anything more flammable than steel, it was a monumentally stupid thing to do.
However, the club owners who went for cheap flammable foam, and the fire inspectors who gave it a pass, ought to get no less than the guy who lit the flames.
And for locking the exit doors (to prevent entry of people without paying the cover charge), the owners and/or manager should face the heaviest penalty of the bunch.
IIRC, there was a side exit that was ignored. There was a huge rush for the front exit, which in turn became heavily congested. This club went up really quickly, and many people succumbed to the noxious fumes from the foam.
I seem to remember one exit was chained shut.....I could be wrong though........When is the club owner to be tried, he's the one who should be held more accountable than this guy...
1. There was no pre-show inspection to approve the use of pyrotechnics at The Station.
2. There was no permit issued because those responsible for obtaining one decided not to.
You got a point. I saw the same video.
You could very well be right. I am by no means sure of those details.
When is the club owner to be tried, he's the one who should be held more accountable than this guy...
Absolutely.
A coworker of mine has a friend who's brother was a bouncer
that night and perished while helping others get out. One survivor remembers being literally thrown out of the jammed front by this bouncer during the fire. Negligence and tragedy all around. Good music acts dont deed pyrotechnics anyway.
yea i knda remember that now. He got many permits for shows in the past but decided to say the hell with it for that show. Bad mistake.
Very (VERY) sad story all around...
Granted, Daniel Biechele lighting those pyrotechnics was a monumentally stupid act.
But what frosts me is that the State's Fire Marchall's office signed off on The Station's "soundproofing" material and went so far as to increase its occupancy limit a mere two weeks prior to the fire.
Yet, amazingly, no one in that office is being held accountable.
The reason the AG’s office didn’t go after any officials is because Rhode Island’s criminal statutes didn’t allow them to. At the time of the fire, RI's laws did NOT allow that negligent acts resulting in the death of others were crimes and thus there was no crime for which these officials could be charged. I believe that the General Assembly has since changed that.
By my understanding, the only deliberate pyrotechnics were a few gerbs at the front of the stage. The things that looked like firepots were the back wall flaring up. A gerb has less ignition potential than a burning cigarette. While it would be reckless for someone to toss burning cigarettes around, a cigarette should not cause a stage wall to instantly erupt in flames.
I remeber seeing a vid of some guy putting his arm in those sparks. He didn't get burned and was showing that they were pretty harmless. I guess no that harmless though.
This guy is an idiot for lighting those kinds of fireworks indoors with such a low ceiling REGARDLESS of the surface covering. Granted, if it had been stainless steel, no problem. But for anything more flammable than steel, it was a monumentally stupid thing to do.
There are fireworks designed to be used indoors. Watch pro wrestling sometime, those guys walk right through the showers of sparks without getting burned.
Every single Monday night, on WWE Raw, they use an amzing amount of pyrotechnics inside arenas. In an interview, ex-WWE wrestler Goldberg said that those sparks sting and have ruined countless pairs of elbow-pads and trunks of his.
Indeed. Based on what I know of the case, I would be inclined to disagree with the verdict. One of the requirements for an involuntary manslaughter conviction (at least in most states, AFAIK) is that a reasonable and prudent person should have been able to predict that the defendant's behavior could result in death, in the manner that it in fact did.
Was the defendant's behavior in this case imprudent? Clearly. A reasonable person would have foreseen the possibility of the fireworks igniting something. On the other hand, I do not think a reasonable person should have foreseen the possibility that the gerbs could start two simultaneous fires which would take less than five seconds to be completely uncontrollable, and would very soon thereafter make the exit nearest the stage completely impassible. I would put far greater accountability on the people responsible for installing and painting the foam than on the person who used the pyrotechnics. That wall was a disaster waiting to happen. If a gerb didn't set it off, a tossed cigarette would have.
That would be a bloody miracle. The State that waited to ratify the Constitution, in the simple interest of preserving liberty, has long since become (in general terms) a totalitarian showcase...
The sparks in a gerb don't have enough thermal mass to heat normal materials up to the combustion point. They aren't completely safe, because multiple sparks landing in the exact same place could have barely enough cumulative effect to cause ignition, but ignition would basically be a chance event.
If I remember the video correctly, this wasn't a case of the gerbs 'barely' setting the wall on fire. The wall ignited in two places immediately when hit by sparks, and it took about 3 seconds for the flames to grow to over ten feet high. Ironically, I think the speed of the fire's growh may have caused some people to delay an extra second or two before leaving, because it looked at first like a pyrotechnic effect--what else could such a quick-rising flame be?
I recall that the foam was a packaging grade and not flame resistant grade for construction purposes.
A drunk with a dropped match might have done the same thing.
Or a tossed cigarette.
I guess someone had to pay but this sounds weird.
ping
It was also painted or coated with something extremely volatile. Normal packing foam is quite flammable, but would have taken some time to ignite. That wall lit up like it was soaked with lighter fluid.
My thoughts exactly. A horrible tragedy. Preventable? Perhaps. But in this day and age when that many people are killed, somebody is going to do time.
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