Disaster on Michigan Avenue

Katrina Douglas (left) and Lakesha Wilson stand outside the [E2] club, looking for information about Wilson's cousin Nichole Rainey. (AP photo by M. Spencer Green)

The Chicago Tribune reports, "There was a great deal of talk in recent days about the rising prospects for a calamity at home. It was anticipated--to the extent anyone can anticipate the advent of chaos--that this would be the handiwork of terrorism. We were supposed, somehow, to prepare for it."

"Nobody, nobody, could have prepared for this: Chicago suffered a breathtaking calamity early Monday morning that started on a hot, crowded second-floor dance club on South Michigan Avenue. At least 21 people were killed, dozens more injured, in the pandemonium that was apparently triggered by the efforts to quell a fight."

And as the details gradually emerged through the day, as the history of the place called E2 became public knowledge, it made you want to spit one question:

Why in the world wasn't this place padlocked, lights out, closed for business

City officials said there was a court order intended to shut the place down. There was a history of building code violations. There had been trips to court over the last several months. There had been scores of incidents that had prompted police to respond over the last three years.

And yet the doors were open, the crowd was huge, the owners were packing people in for a big night.

According to some reports, the panic at the nightclub started when security personnel used pepper spray to break up the fight between patrons. The spray made it hard to breathe.

Gasping for air, hundreds and hundreds of patrons thronged for the exits. The only clear path to fresh air was down a staircase to the glass front doors, which quickly became jammed by the crush of the crowd. In their panic, people tripped or fell or were pushed in the stampede and some of those on the bottom of this deadly pile died.

Many people in Chicago are grieving today for family and friends who went out for a night on the town and got trapped in a disaster. And many people are going to wonder by what confluence of calculations and decisions and grievous mistakes this disaster happened. Why were some exits blocked or locked Did security guards understand that the use of pepper spray to subdue unruly patrons in a crowded, closed place would surely cause panic

All pale beside one question: Why was this place open for business

"The owner knows damn well that he is not to open that second floor facility," Fire Commissioner James Joyce said. We appreciate Commissioner's Joyce's outrage. Would that Chicago had been so emphatic with the owners of E2 before early Monday night.

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