Photo by Derek Redd Bobby Palmer, president of the West Virginia Chapter of the International Fire Marshal’s Association, addresses those attending the organization’s fall training conference Wedensday at the Wheeling Island Hotel-Casino- Racetrack.

The 2003 Station nightclub fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island, left 100 people dead and another 230 injured and remains one of the deadliest nightclub fires in American history. And, as attendees of this week’s fall training conference of the West Virginia Chapter of the International Fire Marshal’s Association learned, it could have been avoided.

The conference concluded Wednesday at the Wheeling Island Hotel-Casino-Racetrack with a look into the inspection of assembly occupancies, and used the Station fire as a case study in how to correctly conduct them.

The focus of the two-day conference was education, said Bobby Palmer, president of the West Virginia Chapter. The first day was spent on the essentials of National Fire Prevention Association codes and procedures. Wednesday dove into assembly occupancy inspection.

“The fire life safety codes are constantly being updated and constantly changing,” Palmer said. “So in order to be sure that our members have the most up-to-date and current information to be able to perform their responsibilities correctly, we want to provide the education necessary for them to do that.”

The fire at Station started when pyrotechnics from Jack Russell’s Great White ignited flammable acoustic foam around the stage.

The entire building was engulfed in flames in six minutes.

Those who attended the conference – state and municipal fire marshals, architects, engineers, general contractors and law enforcement among them – saw video footage from the fire. Palmer said it was an eye-opening experience for everyone attending.

“When you’re watching the videos, you realize those are real people, that’s a real fire and it’s a place that, when you see the images of the building, that could be any city, any small town, anywhere in West Virginia,” he said.

“You see that footage and you realize you need to be taking your job seriously because that could happen if our fire marshals, our fire inspectors, aren’t being diligent in their responsibilities,” Palmer added.

Wheeling Assistant Fire Chief Deric Jamison said that the National Institute of Standards and Technology recreated the fire and ran several tests, learning that just two sprinkler heads would have been able to keep the fire in check, allowing for no significant drop in oxygen levels or rise in heat levels.

Using the Station fire as an example, the conference-goers reviewed assembly occupancies, how to calculate them and how to inspect them and make sure everything is safe.

It was a reminder of how important that job is, Jamison said.

“We have a job to do,” he said. “We’re going to do these inspections and we’re making these rules up, these codes in our books. They’re not written in ink. They’re written in blood.”