17 hours agoShareSaveTom SymondsShareSaveThe Boston Globe/Getty ImagesWarning: This article contains themes you may find upsettingGina Russo was watching a gig with her husband-to-be, Fred Crisostomi, one night in 2003 when she realised something wasn’t right.Great White, an 80s hair-rock band, had opened their set with a thrash of guitar chords, as four large pyrotechnic flares shot out from the stage. The flares instantly set fire to the surrounding acoustic foam panels, installed to deaden the sound.”It was immediate,” Gina tells BBC News. “It got bad very fast. The backflash just happened that quick.”Then came “a black rain of smoke”, Gina adds, the heat melting, then shattering, glass lights above people’s heads. Gina and her fiance made for the nearest exit, a door to the right of the club’s small stage. A bouncer blocked their way, but Gina has no idea why.That’s when “a stampede” began for the main exit, she says, and Fred desperately pushed her ahead in the crowd. Gina says “bodies were piling up” as people scrambled to get out – and her last memory was making it through the door to safety before passing out.When she woke from an induced coma 11 weeks later, Gina learned her fiance had saved her life but had lost his in the fire.This was at The Station nightclub in the snowy town of West Warwick, Rhode Island, on the east coast of the United States. Some 22 years on, there was a near-identical event at Le Constellation bar in the equally snowy ski resort of Crans-Montana, Switzerland, in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2026. At The Station nightclub, 100 people died and at Le Constellation, 40, mainly young people, lost their lives. Many survivors of both fires have severe burn injuries.The two disasters have striking similarities, and not only in their appalling impact on victims. Both were caused by indoor pyrotechnics, experts say. Victims appear to have had little time to find an escape route, and foam panels may have spread the Swiss fire in an identical way to The Station nightclub fire.UK fire investigation consultant Richard Hagger was quick to compare the two tragedies. He is “99% certain” the Swiss fire was triggered by the sparklers. He says if the foam had been fire retardant it would have smouldered, not burned.These similarities raise the questions: do we really understand how dangerous such situations are? And what should we do if we find ourselves caught up in one?A matter of seconds to escapeIn both the Rhode Island and Swiss tragedies, a “flashover fire” is thought to have taken hold. This is when hot air rises, but as the heat and smoke reach the ceiling there is nowhere for it to go. So it spreads downwards, quickly igniting furniture, clothes and skin.In 2003, Phil Barr was 22, back home in Rhode Island for a winter break after living in New York. He was set on a career on Wall Street, but Phil loved a loud rock band, so going to see Great White that night sounded, well, great.He got there early and when his friend arrived shortly before show time, Phil grabbed him a beer and excitedly propelled him to the front of the crowd.As the fire began, the band’s lead singer turned and said, calmly over the PA system: “Wow, that’s not good.”It wasn’t. Phil describes the moment of the “flashover”, saying flames quickly “got overhead, and it was above me”.”All of a sudden, everything’s on fire, I could sort of see an orange glow, behind heavy black smoke but not much else,” he adds.”It went from feeling the heat of flame to feeling like your entire body’s in an oven.”In an attempt to escape, Phil ended up slamming his burning body at a side door and falling out into the snow, and safety. He suffered life-threatening respiratory damage.In an incredible coincidence, a camera crew from a local TV station was in the club, filming a video about venue safety. Their 12-minute footage of the fire shows it took just 25 seconds for flames to reach the ceiling, and within 90 seconds, toxic smoke had filled the building. With the doorway then blocked by people piling on top of each other and black smoke pouring from the …
