AN HOUR AND a half after the fire started, the nightclub’s structure was nearly gone, burned to the ground with only the remnants of walls remaining. There could be no one else alive, so firefighters continued the grim task of recovering bodies. At the area that had once been the front entrance they’d found a macabre five-foot-tall pile of corpses.
One by one the crew removed the dead, with some firefighters overcome with grief. As they got close to the bottom of the heap, a firefighter felt something grab his leg. He looked down and a hand held his boot. Someone was alive under the pile. The firefighter reached down and grasped the hand in his own, and with that touch, Raul “Mike” Vargas knew he would live.
Like so many others, Mike was at first elated when he saw the fireworks. It was the seventh time he’d seen Great White, never before with pyrotechnics. He initially thought, You guys don’t need to be doing that, you already have a great stage presence, but the place went nuts at the spectacle. When it became clear that the wall had caught fire, Mike yelled with others at Jack Russell, “Turn around!” Mike was only four feet from the stage.
Mike tried to stay calm as he made his way back toward the main entrance to exit the club, but when the room got dark everyone panicked. People yelled, “Get out! Get out! Get out!” as they tried to break free of the mass. Mike was pushed from behind and fell onto the floor up against a wall, and others piled on top of him. A former wrestler, he knew to stay on his side, in a fetal position, with his hands up toward his face—if pinned down on his chest or back he would suffocate.
The weight on top of him became heavier and the screams grew louder. At first he heard anger, but the voices quickly changed to fear and panic. As the pressure bore down harder, he thought, “Oh my God, I don’t want to die like this.” Getting hysterical, however, would not free him or save his life, he told himself. He had to stay calm. The building was clearly on fire, and he felt small burns on his left leg, probably from embers, more irritating than agonizing, and he realized that the mass of people on top of him was probably protecting him from the flames. Soon the cries of agony from others began to tone down, and then stopped completely. They’re dead, Mike thought.
He sucked in cool fresh air that had somehow reached the cocoon he had created for himself, and he used his hands near his mouth to keep his breathing area clear. In that tiny air pocket he prayed to the spirit of his deceased father, a heavy equipment operator who died in 1994 when he was crushed by a backhoe, a devastating loss that had Mike once consider taking his own life. Then he thought of his ten-year-old son. Mike had to make it through this for him. Don’t fall asleep, he scolded himself. If you do, you’ll die. He listened for signs of hope. Through the mass that surrounded him he heard sirens and rescue radios. Okay, I’m getting out of here.
He heard one firefighter say, “Oh my God, they’re all dead.” Mike wondered if rescuers would abandon the search for survivors and leave him under the pile. No, they can’t assume that, he reasoned, they have to eventually find him.
The pressure lightened as bodies were removed from the top of the pile. Mike saw a sliver of light. Where there’s light, he thought, there’s got to be people. He thrust his hand toward the light and grabbed a firefighter’s boot.
When a body was lifted off him, Mike sat straight up and looked in the eyes of a firefighter, who appeared stunned. Then Mike felt something behind him, a movement. He turned and saw it was another victim, a woman who was badly burned and didn’t have on any clothes. She reached toward Mike.
“Just get her. Get her. I’m okay. Just get her,” Mike said.
The firefighter, whom Mike later identified as Patrick Rollo, a twelve-year veteran of the West Warwick Fire Department, asked for his name.
“My name is Mike. I’m okay. My leg’s just trapped underneath here, but I’m fine. I can walk out of here.”
“All right, we’re going to get you out of here,” Mike remembered Rollo saying.
“Please take the girl behind me,” Mike answered back, “she’s worse off than I am.”
It was 12:30 a.m. Mike had been trapped inside the inferno for nearly an hour and a half. He got up to head to his car, but was ushered instead to a nearby gurney and transported to the hospital. Mike was the last person to walk away from the fire. Wet, cold, and shivering, he had four small burns on his left leg, but was otherwise physically unharmed.