Well this is a hard one for me to put up. The photos are not the best as I wasn’t shooting with what I am now, but that’s not important. If you don’t know what the Station Nightclub fire was, look it up on Google. But I was there. I was in my home in Downtown Providence when I heard the call go out for the fire. At first it sounded like any other fire, and as I was heading to it (about a 20 min drive normally, I saw normally as it only took me 10 minutes to get there I think…). It was a cold night, snow was on the ground. It started to quickly take a turn outside of the “normal” structure fire. Listening to the radio transmissions from the arriving crews, calling for additional crews from surrounding towns again didn’t sound too unusual. West Warwick is not a large department and they often call for mutual aid from Warwick, RI. What did not sound normal was the back ground noise. Anyone who listens to fire department transmissions, you might hear a siren, or a motor running, all you could hear in the background were screams. Heart Pounding, uncensored screams. I can’t even put into words what it felt like but it is something I have yet to forget [probably won’t]. On top of that, hearing the request for ALL available rescues (BLS AND ALS) to respond to the scene was something you don’t think of. It is Unthinkable, what was going on down there. At first it wasn’t known that 100 souls would be lost and remembered. Getting on scene, I had to walk up the street about 200 yards as the entire street was already lined with Police, fire Crews and Rescues as far as you could see. Triage had been set up across the street stretcher after stretcher was moving the injured to waiting rigs for transport. Many of the crews on the rescues took multiple trips back and forth from the hospital. The critical were taken by chopper to RI hosp for Boston’s Burn center direct from Kent county hospital. That was something else to see, 3 medical choppers landing in a parking lot behind the hospital and also taking multiple trips. There are not medical choppers in RI and the three had to come from MASS and CT. Something else that was also activated was a massive mutual aid response in everything. Multiple Police agencies worked the scene, countless towns sent rescues. the entire state was in motion, departments in all directions around West Warwick were moving apparatus to cover stations and even SE Mass was put into action and a complete structural mutual aid assignment was on stand-by along the RI/MA border to help if anything else happened in the state.

Taking my photos of the scene, and speaking with some of the active duty members who were working, it was a quiet scene. Maybe it wasn’t but all I can remember is how somber the entire scene was. There wasn’t a lot of side talk, there wasn’t a lot of crowd noise, and members were doing what needed to be done and just doing it.

Not knowing what to expect members did their duty and did their best, and to add, it didn’t matter where the person came from, both Volleys and Paid members worked side by side doing their duty.