Durst to Aid Fire Victims

Fred Durst can relate to concert tragedies.

The Limp Bizkit lead singer, whose band was at the center of a 2001 concert stampede that left one fan dead, is organizing a fundraiser to aid the victims of last week's devastating nightclub fire at a Great White show in Rhode Island.

The fire claimed the lives of 96, including Great White guitarist Ty Longley. About 80 survivors remain hospitalized, many in critical condition.

"I am horrified at what happened to the innocent people who were burned to death at the Great White concert recently," Durst says in a message on limpbizkit.com. "I want to create some sort of benefit for the families of the ones who were lost. I feel so much sadness because of it. How could such a thing happen? Especially when it could have been prevented?"

The blaze was apparently accidentally touched off by Great White's pyrotechnics, which ignited highly flammable soundproofing foam on the club walls.

"It feels right to get involved because I am a musician, I love music, and I love going to concerts. That could have been any of us!" Durst says. "Fortunately it wasn't, and we can come together to help not only cause awareness to prevent anything like this again, but to help the people who are sincerely hurting from their loss."

Last November, an Australian coroner criticized Durst for failing to halt his band's set at the Big Day Out festival in Sydney two years ago. Fans surged forward, causing several trampling-related injuries and triggering the heart-attack death of a 15-year-old girl. The band, however, was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing.

Durst, one of the few artists to make an anti-war statement at last weekend's Grammy Awards, is asking fans to call a telephone number (310-865-7671) to contribute ideas on how they can get involved and provide some comfort and charitable relief to the victims and their families.

"It is so important to make any concert a safe place for fans to be...I believe that it is our resposibility to provide you with the safest most secure conditions when you come to our concerts and i pray that every club owner, tour promoter, venue security, and band will learn from this horrible incident," adds Durst, who has stated he's still haunted by the Australian incident.

Meanwhile, the investigation into the fire continues.

On Thursday, Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri announced that all victims of the fire had been identified and reduced the death toll from 97 to 96 people.

Two members of Great White appeared at a closed-door grand jury session in East Greenwich on Wednesday, but did not testify as expected. Instead, prosecutors and attorneys for the metal band went back and forth for much of the hearing. The rockers indicated they will be ready to answer questions about the tragedy when the grand jury reconvenes Friday.

The panel is in the process of examining all the available evidence and will decide whether any criminal charges are warranted against the band or the co-owners of The Station nightclub, brothers Michael and Jefrrey Derderian.

While local officials try figuring out which party was responsible for allowing pyrotechnics in a building that did not have a permit for such use, federal authorities have announced they're launching their own probe.

The National Construction Safety Team, created in October by the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, will study the architecture of the building, including window and door placement, building materials and the venue's capacity to determine whether the disaster could have been averted with a functioning automatic sprinkler system.

Funerals for many of the victims are taking place over the next few days. Longley's family, meanwhile, is also organizing a benefit featuring bands from the guitarist's Pennsylvania home town.