Re: Concert Disaster In Rhode Island

["Steve West" <stevewest106@hotmail.com>]

> On 21 Feb 2003 at 13:24, Donna Halper wrote:
>
> > And as might be expected, WBZ Radio had reporters on this story
> > immediately-- at the risk of seeming like I am shilling for them, they
do
> > a wonderful job of being proactive and getting reporters to the scene of
> > breaking stories.  Now, on to other things.  Wouldn't it seem that after
> > the Cocoanut Grove (492 dead) club owners would have learnt something?

I have a theory...  Coconut Grove was back in, what, 1942?  When there
hasn't been a disaster in that long, people, including lawmakers &
inspectors become complacent.  It seems to me that it's human nature to
develop an attitude of 'it won't happen to me'...

At the risk of going off topic, the same could be said of world events
today.

> One would think there would be city codes requiring this sort of thing.
Then again, maybe
> there are and the  owners paid off someone not to notice the violations.

Or, perhaps it's just a case of nobody thought it was in these small club's
financial interest to require installing sprinklers and other safety
devices.  Let's say you purchase a tiny club about the size of this place.
You spend... for the sake of arguement, 300k on it.  You don't have that
much money, and you along with every other small club or small business
owner attend the town meetings and lobby along with your lawyers against any
new requirements that will set you back a lot of cash.

I know some places in Central Mass that if there were new regulations put
into effect it would cost less to demolish the old building than it would to
bring it up to modern code.

Not standing up for the owners of this place in particular, just offering a
reasonable theory as to why there weren't better fire codes in effect
requiring sprinklers and other devices.

Steve West
www.airchexx.com