After the inferno

Two months ago, the world watched in horror as a fire swept through a rock venue in Rhode Island, leaving almost 100 people dead. David Usborne returns to talk to a community still struggling to come to terms with the tragic events of that night

An antique radio keeps Ray Mattera company in the workshop where he looks after machinery parts for the Parks Department of Providence, the capital of Rhode Island. He has it tuned all day to an AM station that carries the BBC World Service. He says that he has been following events in Iraq intently. But how can a man dealing with so much personal grief pay attention to what is happening over there?

Perhaps the soft tones of the British announcers have helped distract him, if only a little. But then, when he sits at his small metal desk, he eyes settle on the tiny framed photograph of his daughter, Tammy. She is smiling, with flowing black hair. He hasn't seen Tammy since 20 February, the day that she decided to go with a friend to a club in nearby West Warwick to see a band she liked, called Great White, heavy-rock survivors from the late Eighties.

The world may have forgotten what happened on that day, but not so anyone here in Rhode Island, the smallest state in America. (Drive for 45 minutes in any direction from any point and you will be beyond its borders.) Tammy was on her way to The Station, a scruffy, low-down joint that the locals used to call the "Ashtray". It's horrible to think of that nickname now, because when Great White started their opening number, a burst of pyrotechnic sparklers suddenly ignited the curtains and the ceiling. Within seconds, the building was engulfed in flames. It was a lethal inferno that left 99 people dead and 190 injured.

The impact was felt not just in Rhode Island: extraordinary amateur video footage of the disaster was transmitted across the world's media. Both from inside the club, as the flames caught hold of the stage, and outside, as the victims were pulled out and the club became an inferno, the footage made harrowing viewing. Anyone who has watched a band in a flea-pit venue well over its fire limit, and wondered how anyone could escape in the event of an emergency, will be able to relate even more keenly to the tragedy. And as the media interest abated, there were also the first exchanges in the row between the venue and the band over who had been responsible for the pyrotechnics.

People here have tried to move on, but it's hard. Ray's wife spends most days in bed, unable to face the outside world, or the truth that her daughter, who was 29 and was married with two children, is not coming back. The town of West Warwick decided to go ahead with its St Patrick's Day parade last month, but with 25,000 people lining the main street, it turned into a collective wake. Meanwhile, the legal imbroglios have only just begun. State and federal prosecutors are still mulling over criminal charges. And lawyers in droves are preparing civil suits for the victims' families.

On a ruling by the Superior Court Judge, Alice Gibney, two dozen lawyers visited the site last month to identify materials – foam, carpet segments, couch cushions, and so on – that may serve as evidence in civil suits. Judge Gibney also gave me permission to step for a few minutes into what she said had become "a holy place". All that still stands are the walls of what used to be the drum room at the back of the stage, and a small shed off the main site where full beer bottles still line the shelves. Otherwise, only the tiled floor and the foundations remain, piled high with the detritus of the inferno. A metal basket filled with pool balls sits amid blackened vodka bottles. Some of the balls still look playable; most exploded in the heat of the fire, thought to have reached 1,000C.

The hardest work lies ahead for people such as Ray. He shares the suffering of the families, and the anger over how it happened. How, in particular, had anyone seen fit to allow fireworks in an old wooden building with no sprinklers? He's going to counselling and is on antidepressants. He's back at work, but the hurdles ahead are huge.

Ray knows, more or less, what happened inside the club. Standing near the stage, Tammy was first to understand that the fire was out of control and grabbed her friend, Erin, by the hand, dragging her across the room towards the main door. But in the crush, Erin got caught the wrong side of some metal and glass doors just inside the entrance hall. Tammy's hand was pulled away from hers. Erin slumped but someone dragged her through a smashed window. Tammy had saved her life. But her fate was different. She became one of scores of people who were jammed, unable to escape, in the entrance way. Narrow and dark – the lights failed quickly – the area was dubbed the "dead zone" by rescue workers.

It all happened shortly after 11pm. Ray and his wife were in bed watching the news. The anchor reported the fire just before 11.15pm. "My wife jumped out of bed and started screaming," Ray remembers. He leapt in his car, first going to the local hospital seeking news of Tammy. Nothing. Then he went to the scene itself. He found his daughter's car, but it was empty. He didn't find Tammy that night or the next day. In fact, he didn't have confirmation of her fate for days afterwards. Finally, only after he had given dental records to the coroners, was she formally declared dead.

Ray can describe all this with reasonable composure. But it's when he relates his efforts to view his daughter's body at the funeral parlour, more than a week after the fire, that he breaks down. His words come out in anguished bursts as his tears begin, again, to run down his face. "I asked if I could see her. I had brought her a piece of palm in the shape of a cross. The director said, 'Mr Mattera, I am the funeral director and even I shouldn't have seen her. I cannot let you see her. You need to remember her the way she was.' The next day, I brought the palm again, and I said, 'You said I could see her.' He said, 'I'll bring the body up, but you can't open the bag.' I picked her up. I held her. I told her I was sorry and I loved her. I didn't open the bag. I wanted to see, but they wouldn't let me."

Someone else who knows even better the hell that happened in there is 40-year-old Bob Cushman. He went to The Station that night with a couple of friends. Just before Great White came on, Cushman left the stage area where they were standing and elbowed his way to the bar for some more beers. That might have saved his life; the fire erupted just as he was paying. "I turned around and saw the flames on the sides of the stage. I was very calm. I knew that this wasn't right, but I thought someone would put it out. The smoke was travelling across the top of the stage, and after 10 or 15 seconds – the fire alarm was going off by this time – I said, I'm getting out of here."

Once out, Cushman started to hunt for his friends. As he searched, he saw from the outside what was happening in the entrance way, where Tammy would have been. People were piled on top of one another, unable to move and locked so tightly together that it was impossible to pull anyone out. "All of a sudden, the people on top just burst into flames. That was the toughest thing. They suffered the worst kind of death. I could see their faces. Then I thought, 'I'm getting out of here. I can't see any more of this.'" He found his friends. One had a gash to his head. The other, Whitey, was burned and his body was smoking. Cushman saw an ambulance and got him inside. "He was screaming with pain," he says. "They poured this liquid on him, but the smoke was still coming from his body."

For Cushman, at least, it could have been far worse. On the day that we talk, he is preparing to visit Whitey in a local rehabilitation facility. Whitey is recovering well and is almost ready to go home. But Cushman is among the very many in the state who are furious at what was allowed to happen. "I just can't believe that in a place like that you would allow some pyros. At big concerts in modern venues maybe, but that was a rinky-dink place. It's like lighting sparklers in your basement, and you just don't do something like that." He recently travelled to Washington, DC, to join a press conference with a local congressman, who has drafted legislation that would give tax cuts to encourage establishments such as The Station to fit sprinklers.

Mattera is on a similar mission. He was due to meet with a state senator to talk about proposing a new state law, bearing his daughter's name, that would make sprinkler systems mandatory in all public places. There are no uniform fire laws for the whole of the United States, and codes are set by states individually. In Rhode Island, the laws have been exposed as a muddle that even some fire inspectors find hard to understand. Most importantly, so-called "grandfather" clauses mean that buildings predating 1968 – such as The Station – can be exempted from sprinkler requirements imposed in laws passed in later years.

In the meantime, Mattera is also determined that someone should pay for the fire that killed his daughter. "I just want to see whoever was responsible for this answer with some jail time," he says. The question of possible criminal charges is being handled by the state attorney general, who has empanelled a grand jury. On the one side are the club owners, a pair of brothers, who point out that they had passed a fire inspection only recently. They insist that they never gave permission to the band to use pyrotechnics, which were not covered by the permits. Lawyers for the band, however, have replied that they had verbal permission from the club to light the fireworks. Not so, say the owners.

Mattera has not yet decided whether to join other families in filing damage lawsuits. "What good will money do?" he asks. "It won't bring the children their mummy back." If he does join a suit, he will set aside any compensation as a college fund for the children, Nathan and Nicholas.

So far, only a handful of suits have been filed. But few people expect the number to stay low. When the civil hearings begin – and they are likely to drag on for years – all of Rhode Island will be watching, because almost everyone here feels directly affected by the fire. "This was a personal event for everyone," says Judge Gibney. "Everyone either knows someone who was here or someone who lost someone."

Steven Minicucci, one of the lawyers at the site of the fire last month, recalls his first meeting with a man who lost his girlfriend after their hands slipped loose. "His whole body started to shake as he told me. Sometimes, when I am sitting there listening to what the survivors went through, I find myself just putting my pen down, because it just grabs you, as a human being."

There is one thing, meanwhile, that gives Ray Mattera a little solace. The funeral parlour found a small silver chain around Tammy's neck with a tiny charm hanging from it. It is an angel with a wand and a small star. They cleaned it and gave it to him. The day we met, he proudly fished it out from under his shirt. The chain is a little short around his neck, but no matter. "I will never take this off," he says. "Never."