Are You Risking Your Life on a Night Out?

ByABC News
November 6, 2003, 4:47 PM

Nov. 8 -- Despite the deaths last February of 21 partygoers in Chicago, and 100 music fans in Rhode Island, many club owners and fire departments still may not be making safety a top priority, according to a Primetime investigation.

It's business as usual, said Gary Briese, head of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. "It hasn't improved at all. Nothing's changed."

Working with ABC affiliates around the nation, Primetime found that in many nightclubs, there remain key elements for another tragedy.

In Denver, in a space that's supposed to hold 76 people, patrons were packed in so tight they could barely move.

At the same club, a back exit was completely blocked. Nor did it lead outside it led to another club. The street exit is actually reached through the kitchen.

After Primetime's visit, the club said it cleared the exit, and retrained its staff about crowd control.

At another club, Primetime found a deck packed with people and some of the staff seem completely clueless about its capacity. One cop said the deck was packed every weekend, and estimated its capacity at 500 people. It was actually supposed to hold only 141 people.

At other places Primetime saw a fight break out in a stairwell, candles burning inches from people's clothes, and a fire alarm taped over and painted.

There were problems all over the country: exits blocked with trash and tubs of beer in St. Louis; an exit door locked shut at a hall filled with 300 people in San Diego; an exit doorway chained in Tampa; a crowd restless to get in blocking people from getting out in Wilmington, N.C.

Potential Harm in the Hurricane Hut?

Of all the communities visited by Primetime, the most troubling was a suburb of Houston Harris County, Texas.

County Fire Marshal Mike Montgomery admitted his office doesn't inspect the area's 400 nightclubs nearly often enough. There is only one full-time inspector for the whole unincorporated county, he said.

In a club called the Hurricane Hut, that inspector found more than a dozen violations: