It has been 18 years since the tragic week of Feb. 17, 2003, and the loss of 121 people and almost 300 injured in two events. A third event that week avoided disaster. If you need a refresher on the three events, they were the E2 Nightclub in Chicago, the Fine Line Music Café in Minneapolis, and The Station Nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island. The victims were friends and families out for an evening of entertainment with plans of returning home and looking forward to what the next day brings. None of them entered these buildings thinking they would never come back out.

I won’t go into the details of each event, because there is plenty of searchable information on each of them – although it’s a little more difficult to find information on the Fine Line incident. As NFPA officials stated, "There are no new lessons to be learned from this fire; only old lessons that tragically went unheeded."

As with many other tragic events throughout history, each of these were preventable. E2 had been ordered closed by the City of Chicago for building code violations, yet they were still open and overcrowded. One of the failures noted was not sharing information with other city departments. Pyrotechnics at Fine Line had not been authorized, and questions around removal of a suspended ceiling and not relocating sprinklers had not been resolved. The Station had been inspected, but were correction orders followed up? Did an inspector miss the flammable egg-crate foam on the walls of the stage? Who failed to enforce the “change in occupancy use”?

At Fine Line, why was only one person treated for smoke inhalation at the scene? The E2 incident was all over the national news that Monday morning. In response, Fine Line management dusted off their emergency plan and called for an all-staff meeting to review their plan so nothing like Chicago could happen at their club. They could not have envisioned what would occur that Monday night, but they had their emergency plan and it worked, with the addition of fire sprinklers to control the fire.

Fine Line is a local news story, not a big national one, because sprinklers and a plan prevented disaster. I always wonder, if Fine Line made the national news, would The Station event have happened? The only reason there is video of The Station event is because, after E2, a news station send a crew to do a story on nightclub safety.

The model codes did change after 2003. Assembly main exits got larger, sprinkler thresholds were lowered, emergency planning was emphasized, and trained crowd managers were added to the requirements.

The Minnesota State Fire Code is a big book, and we fire code officials probably pick and choose the battles we want to take on. If your time is limited, focus on those buildings where people assemble and people sleep. Chapter 11 contains many requirements for existing building construction. Don’t forget about Chapter 4 and follow up on your orders. We don’t ever want to have another week like Feb. 17, 2003.