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c h a P t e r 18 into the breach nearly an hour aFter hose streams had begun soaking the stack of charred bodies in The Station’s front entrance corridor, police and firemen began the grim task of disentangling and bagging human remains. As one fireman approached the smoldering pyre, a hand thrust out from beneath it, grabbing one of his boots. This was not possible. Raul “Mike” Vargas, the GNC store manager, had been standing about three rows back from the stage when fire broke out. He was aware of the stage door, but saw that some people who first headed toward it were turning back. He heard someone yell, “This is for the band only.” So Vargas joined the human tidal wave rushing the front doors. When people fell in front of him, the force of the crush behind him caused him to fall, too, and he soon became wedged under several layers of bodies, lying on his side, in a fetal position, his head about a foot from the outside doors. Since he was curled on his side, the weight of those above him did not compress his chest, as it would have had he lain prone. Vargas lay on the red tile floor, hands to face, within a small triangular wedge of space just within the doorway. He heard the screams of victims piled on top of him and thought of someone telling his wife and son that he had died. Fortunately, a small stream of fresh air seemed to flow past his face under the pile. A few times, when he felt liquid pouring over him, Vargas understood that death or terror had loosed the bladder of someone above him in the stack. Yet he remained calm. The only heat he felt was from the bodies wedged around him. “If [I] freak out, I’m going to die,” thought Vargas. So he forced himself to remain still—long after all around him stopped moving and screaming; through the conflagration and the subsequent fire hose deluge. As the cold water from firefighters’ hoses ran down his face, Vargas rinsed his mouth and spat soot and cinders. With his hands, he was able to clear the water/ i n t o t h e b r e a c h 117 ash mixture from his eyes. Then, he waited, conserving his energy. Vargas heard a fireman remark, “My God, they’re all dead.” When a boot first came near, he reached out for it. Freed of the bodies on top of him, Vargas sat up. The persons beside him and on top of him were dead—burned so completely that he could not tell if they were male or female. Then, Vargas stood, descended the club’s concrete steps, and began walking to his car, with firefighters staring in disbelief. “Don’t look back,” Vargas thought. “If I look back, I’ll really be messed up.” Firemen insisted that he be placed on a gurney and transported by ambulance to a hospital. When they took his vital signs, EMTs noted the time—12:35 a.m.—ninety minutes after the fire’s outbreak. Mike Vargas was discharged the following afternoon from Miriam Hospital in Providence with small burns on his left leg. Several days after the fire, he returned to The Station and gazed down at the red tile floor where he had lain. It was heat-blackened, except for the small patch of tiles that had been directly beneath him. Lieutenant Roger St. Jean was a sixteen-year veteran of the West Warwick Fire Department, assigned to Station 4, only a half mile from The Station on Cowesett Avenue. On February 20, 2003, he was working on D Platoon, a night shift beginning at 5:30 p.m. and ending at 7:30 the next morning. St. Jean was responsible for Engine 4, his station’s pumper truck. (Each station had a pumper truck and ladder truck referred to by the station’s number—that is, Ladder 1 was the ladder truck from Station 1; Engine 4, the pumper from Station 4.) Firehouses still use fire bells. Some still use poles. At 11:10 p.m. the bell at Station 4 sounded, and the intercom barked that there was a “building fire at The Station” that had been reported by police. St. Jean and his partner on Engine 4, Private Aaron Perkins, knew by the reference to a police call that this was the...

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