Station Nightclub Fire - Research Paper Example

Station night club has a by complex layout of the club and the bar section and has small entrances and exits. The complexity of the club’s architectural structures contributed to the loss of substantial lives during the fire incident in 2003. The fire incident happened during the time when the club’s management had scheduled a filming session concerning fire safety in clubs. This session was scheduled to conduct public lessons on fire issues after a crowd management issue that had claimed some lives at another club within the island.

In the process of conducting the exercise, the club’s management allowed the use of pyrotechnic devises to demonstrate the practical aspects of the lesson. The pyrotechnic flames ended up igniting the flammable materials at the platform part of the club which eventually caused the spread of the fire the other sections of the club. The incident that led to the ignition of flames to the spread of fire inside the club took approximately 6 minutes. This short period instilled panic to the clubbers who in turn struggled to exit the building.

Their efforts to move out of the club were hindered by the stampede that ensued at both the escape routes and the main entrance of the club. Few minutes after the fire, the whole club was covered in flames while the people were still struggling to free themselves. 10 minutes after the fire, the club’s fire management team and the fire rescue team initiated their efforts to put out the fire. However, their efforts to rescue the trapped club members were unsuccessful given the fact that the fire had reached its full blown stage.

The aftermath of the incident was characterized by immediate review of the codes applied by the company in fire incidences. This process entailed reviewing of the codes by the NFPA and initiation of a research project to test the efficiencies of the codes that were in existence before the fire (Barry, 2010). Among the codes that were addressed after the fire