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c h a P t e r 20 the missi ng Be absolutely certain of the identity of the deceased. . . . All notifications should be made in person. . . . More than one person should be present to make the notification. DO NOT NOTIFY CHILDREN, LEAVE NOTES, OR TELL NEIGHBORS. . . . Do not use ambiguous terms such as “we have lost John Smith” or “he has expired.” . . . Use terms such as “killed,” “died,” and “dead,” as these leave no questions. —from the “Protocol for Death Notification” furnished to Station Fire Family Assistance Center personnel sights and sounds oF the station Fire were broadcast locally, nationwide, and worldwide within forty-five minutes of its outbreak, thanks to a film-sharing arrangement between WPRI-TV Channel 12 and other networks . This caused family and friends of Station patrons to flock to the site when calls to their loved ones’ cell phones went unanswered. The first arrivals stood by at the Cowesett Inn while the injured were triaged. Other families quickly filled the waiting rooms of area hospitals, praying that their sons, daughters, husbands, or wives had been transported, alive. Many returned to the remains of The Station the next morning, hoping they would not find a familiar car still parked in the club’s lot. At daybreak, 211 Cowesett Avenue looked like a battlefield. Blood-stained snowbanks ringed the club’s still-smoldering remains. Burned clothing and first-aid detritus littered the parking lot. Firefighters went about their grim business of extracting bodies from the rubble, proceeding at a somber, measured pace. Television uplink trucks soon surrounded the site; before long, reporters outnumbered firemen. The media circus had come to town, and would not strike its tent for weeks to come. In any disaster, the first step in identifying the dead and injured is learning just who is missing. Then, bodies or hospital patients can potentially be t h e m i s s i n g 135 matched to absentees. To this end, police recorded the make, model, and registration of every car in The Station’s parking lot, to be run against DMV records so that registered owners could be ascertained. That would provide at least a starting point for identifying the missing. The parking lot registration list was as close to a roster of attendees as the Station fire would yield. But it was woefully incomplete. Additional names would have to come from families, or from persons who had escaped the blaze. Families needed no roster, however, to appreciate the binary possibilities for their missing loved ones presented by a car still in the lot that morning : its driver had to be either dead or burned beyond easy identification. Identifying victims of a tragedy is much more difficult when biological remains are completely lost, as occurred with hundreds of 9/11 victims. Fortunately , something remained of every Station victim’s body. (You know the little name/address slips that passengers are asked to complete immediately before boarding transoceanic flights? Ever wonder why you don’t fill one out when flying over land? The answer has to do with proving who was actually on a plane when remains are lost forever.) Donna Miele, Michael Hoogasian’s sister, stood in the Cowesett Inn parking lot, trembling in the morning chill. She could not find her brother or his wife, Sandy. Sandy’s car was still parked across the street at The Station—a bad sign. Still, Donna would not give up hope. “Maybe he’s unconscious somewhere,” she told a reporter. But Miele’s hopes were dashed two days later. Her brother’s body was among the first nineteen identified. Sandy’s took another day to identify. Mike and Sandy—who met Jack Russell at the Doors of Perception studio while Mike received a “flames” tattoo—were two of one hundred Great White fans who would never listen to music again. Their families would always remember where they were when they received the awful news. For most, it was the Crowne Plaza Hotel in nearby Warwick. At 5 o’clock on the morning after the fire, the American Red Cross and the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency began operating a Family Assistance Center at the Crowne Plaza. The hotel became at once a maelstrom of hope, worry, grieving, and, for some, rejoicing. It was where families went to find their missing. The scene at the Crowne Plaza was, for the most part, organized and somber . Families gathered around tables in function rooms, each one equipped...

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