The Devil Made Him Do It

By Ed Magnuson

In New York City, where they never roll up the sidewalks, illegal social clubs are a long tradition. There are more than 1,000 such clubs strewn across the city's five boroughs, dispensing cheap booze, loud music and a touch of the home country to immigrants. Many of them have something in common: the lack of a liquor license. All too many also offer their patrons something besides the prospect of a hot time on the town: the high risk of a fiery death.

The city's law-enforcement bureaucracies have long been aware of the risks posed by the absence of anti-fire precautions at many social clubs. But the police, fire department, health and building inspectors all seemed unwilling to act or incapable of doing anything about the problem before tragedy struck. Their inadequate performance resulted last week in a needless disaster -- the city's worst fire in 79 years.

The Happy Land Social Club was a Hispanic, mostly Honduran, gathering spot in a seedy commercial section of the Bronx. It was ordered to close in November 1988 because it had no fire exits, sprinkler system, fire alarm or emergency lighting. It did shut down, but only briefly. Police knew it had reopened; they arrested its bartender last July for selling liquor without a license.

Happy Land was living up to its name on Sunday last week. Well after 3 a.m., strobe lights were pulsing through the cigarette haze to bounce off young women twisting in slinky miniskirts and high heels. Youthful men in leather pants and bright shirts picked up the beat of salsa, reggae and Honduran calypso.

But then an angry man joined the revelers. Julio Gonzalez, 36, one of Fidel Castro's cast-off gifts to the U.S. in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, came to plead with his estranged girlfriend, Lydia Feliciano, 45. She earned $150 a night checking coats and taking tickets ($5 each) at the club. Gonzalez had lived with Feliciano for eight apparently calm years. But in February he lost his job as a warehouseman. Then the two quarreled bitterly, reportedly over his fondness for her niece, and she ordered him to leave her apartment. Now living in a tiny room and hustling for handouts on the street, he wanted her to take him back. She refused. When he swore at her, a bouncer ordered him to leave. He did, but with a parting threat: "I will be back. I will shut this place down."

Police say Gonzalez has confessed to filling a plastic container with $1 worth of gasoline at a nearby station, then splashing it through the club's front door. He threw a lighted match into the gasoline and watched the flames rise.

The acrid black smoke billowed so swiftly through the two-level, 22-ft. by 58-ft. brick building that the few shouts of "Fuego! Fuego!" were too late. Most of the partygoers, who were on the low-ceilinged second level, where there were no windows or exits, stampeded toward two narrow stairways. The main door on the ground floor was blocked by flames. The only window was barred. Feliciano, the target of Gonzalez's rage, and four others ran to a seldom-used second door, where they forced open a gate to become the only known survivors.

In a matter of minutes, 87 people died from the toxic smoke. Firemen arrived within three minutes of being called, but found a deathly silence. They soon discovered only corpses jumbled on the stairs, stretched out on the dance floors or still astride barstools and clutching glasses.

Gonzalez, meanwhile, had calmly returned to his room. He was arrested there, still in bed twelve hours later. His only explanation: "I got angry. The devil got into me." Gonzalez was indicted by a grand jury on 87 counts of felony murder, the most lodged against anyone in U.S. history.

The fire could have been prevented. After a 1988 social-club fire killed six people, Mayor Edward Koch created ten inspection teams to shut down offending clubs. But budgetary pressure and complacency quickly took their toll, as they seem to with most public services in the city. By the time Happy Land burned, only two inspection teams were left.

Mayor David Dinkins dispatched 20 fresh teams last week to check on the 179 clubs that had been ordered closed. Incredibly, city law does not let inspectors immediately lock up all such places. Dinkins asked for legislation to promptly padlock any hazardous club.

One club operator, however, was beyond any further penalties: Elias Colon, the manager of Happy Land. He died with his partying customers.

With reporting by Naushad S. Mehta/New York