Tuesday, February 18, 2003 :::
Sunday night, the top local news in Chicago was the death of Mayor 'M's mother, the widow of Mayor 'J'. Then, six hours later, it wasn't.
In case you've not heard, 21 people were trampled to death at the E2 dance club above the Epitome Lounge. A fight broke out, causing a small rush for the main exit, and then tear gas or mace was sprayed to try to break up the fight, causing a large rush for the main exit. The coat check was near the top of the stairs, probably compounding the problem. All those killed died near this front stairway. (Early reports of dead near a back entrance were due to a lack of communication within or among the emergency response teams; some dead were removed to that location and later found there by others.)
During the press conference at 4:30 P.M. (CT) it was reported that there was a court injunction, obtained last July, forbidding the club (on the second story of the building) to be open. The injunction was granted for 11 counts of building code violations, most of them really probably irrelevant, but at least one dealing with egress problems. This was not a normal event, but a special party put on by a promoter that had hired out the club for the evening; it's not clear how regularly the injunction was being violated. (The owners of the club seem to assert that the injunction applied only to part of the club, perhaps the third floor, though the city's lawyer has asserted that it is not reasonable that the defendant would believe this; the club also says that the security was provided by those hiring out the space, not by the club.)
The maximum occupancy of the second floor of the building was, therefore, 0, but I never heard the question as to what it might have been before July answered (though I did hear it asked). The occupancy on the lower floor was 327; early estimates were that the crowd upstairs numbered 1500, but Terry Hillard (superintendent of Chicago police) doesn't believe it was that high, and it sounds like a lot of other "smart money" doesn't believe it either.
The Chicago fire department, as this broke out, was responding to an expiring pregnancy on the first floor, and was therefore quite present as things began; they quickly called for backup, aware that something was going on but not able to do as much as they might have liked. What exactly was going on will hopefully become clearer when a chance is taken to look at what Mr. Hillard termed "high-tech video" in possession of the police.
I believe it was Mr. Trotter, the city's 911 coordinator, who asserted that the city can't police these court injunctions because it doesn't have the resources. It may be that it wouldn't be worth having police go from place to place checking on these things, but it would seem to me that the civil penalties would be high enough to offer a bounty that would have enticed one of 1500 people to let the city know about what was going on. How to get an appreciable number of the 1500 informed of the injunction — indeed, it's quite possible people would be wary of attending an event at a location for which such an injunction existed — is a moderately more difficult question, but especially if, as was reported, such events were being promoted on the radio, it seems like posting lists on the web or handing them out to churches in the area would surely attract the attention of enough people for enforcement to take place (possibly even without a bounty).
Incidentally, insofar as history doesn't repeat itself, but rhymes, this event seems to rhyme with the Iriquois Theater Fire, which resulted in many of the building code requirements that were being violated on Monday morning.
::: posted by dWj at 9:53 AM
