Nine people were killed after a fire ripped through an assisted living facility in Fall River, Massachusetts, on Sunday night, with one person remaining in critical condition in hospital.
More than 30 residents were taken to area hospitals and dozens were rescued by ladder as firefighters battled heavy smoke that filled the Gabriel House Assisted Living Residence on Oliver Street, local officials said.
The fire broke out around 9.30pm, activating all firefighters in the city to respond, including 30 who were off duty.
“They showed up to the scene, obviously fire, smoke and victims screaming for rescue out windows, and it makes for a chaotic scene,” the Fall River fire chief, Jeffrey Bacon, said at a press conference on Monday morning.
When crews arrived, Bacon said they found people hanging from windows seeking rescue as heavy smoke and flames poured from the front of the building. Firefighters would then enter the facility, rescuing occupants while battling the blaze.
The fire chief said it was smoke rather than large flames that created the chaotic scene. Damage was contained to one wing of the approximately 70-resident facility, though smoke damage spread throughout the building.
Lorraine Ferrara, a 71-year-old resident of Gabriel House, told the Boston Globe that she was alerted to the fire when a worker banged on her door.
When she opened it, the smoke “blew me back”, she said. “I thought I was going to die. I thought this was it.”
A firefighter broke a window to rescue her. “It was just a nightmare,” she told the outlet. “All the ambulances and fire trucks. People screaming. It was crazy.”
Another resident, Michael Pimentel, 72, said it was “pitch black, smoke up the yin-yang”.
Some residents raised concerns about the conditions at the home.
Pimentel told the outlet that no lights went on with the fire alarms, and there was no illumination of exit signs. Pimentel said the elevator had been broken for more than eight months, had been fixed, and then broke again.
Russell Silvia, 41, said that the home smelled like “urine” and mentioned “mice in beds” and “cockroaches”.
“You got people that are in wheelchairs that couldn’t come out for over eight and a half months – that did not come outside,” Silvia said. Silva added that the fire was “bound to happen.
“It’s going to take a fire for a light to get shined over there.”
Fall River’s mayor, Paul Coogan, said he had “not heard anything … I do not know a thing about the elevator.”
Attempts to contact Gabriel House management on Monday were no immediately successful. A voicemail box for the facility was full.
The mayor also confirmed that some victims’ bodies remained inside the facility on Monday morning, with medical examiners now at the scene. Five firefighters were also hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries but have since been released.
The origin and cause of the fire is still under investigation.
The firefighters in Fall River on Monday said inadequate staffing hindered the response to the deadly blaze at Gabriel House.
The union said its firefighters could have saved more lives with more manpower.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
