Across Fall River, Mass., questions lingered on Tuesday about the devastating fire that killed nine residents of an assisted living facility and injured many more over the weekend, in what has become the state’s deadliest blaze in four decades.
Officials released the names of most of the victims, who ranged in age from 61 to 86. At area hospitals, more patients were released. The Bristol County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement late Monday that the fire investigation was ongoing, “but the cause does not appear to be suspicious at this time.”
Some survivors of the fire, and some others familiar with the property, Gabriel House, said that some residents had smoked in their rooms, although smoking indoors was not permitted. And one former employee who worked there for more than a year said she never saw the staff perform fire drills or practice emergency evacuations, despite a population that included many older patients with mobility limitations who used walkers, wheelchairs or scooters to get around.
“No fire drills, no practice, no tests,” said Jenn Marley, a certified nursing assistant who said she worked at Gabriel House in 2018 and 2019, and left the job of her own accord. “All they said when I was hired was, There’s an evacuation plan posted on the wall.”
“Those poor souls who passed away,” she added.
The owner of the assisted living facility, Dennis Etzkorn, did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement provided to The Boston Globe, he pledged to “continue to cooperate with the authorities and provide them with any information they may need throughout the investigative process regarding the cause and origin of this fire.”
The fire at Gabriel House — home to 70 people, many of them disabled or suffering health problems — broke out around 9:30 p.m. on Sunday. As thick smoke filled the building, some residents smashed windows in their rooms and cried out for help. Police and firefighters carried some residents from the building, as nurses from a hospital across the street ran to ferry them to safety in wheelchairs.
At a briefing on Tuesday, Jeffrey Bacon, the city’s fire chief, responded to claims by the firefighters’ union that the department had been understaffed, and that more lives could have been saved if more personnel had responded in the critical first minutes after the alarm.
“I don’t know if it would have saved more lives — that’s speculation,” Chief Bacon said. “You could have had 100 firefighters show up for an event like that, and it wouldn’t have been enough. For an event like that, you can never have enough staffing. And you can’t base staffing on a 40-year worst-case incident. No one can do that.”
For his own mental health, and for the mental health of the firefighters who responded, Mr. Bacon said he was choosing to focus on “the 50 lives that were saved based on their heroic efforts.”
The Executive Office of Aging & Independence, which oversees assisted living facilities, cited Gabriel House for missing or inconsistent documentation, and for missing or incomplete components of quality assurance and performance improvement requirements, in 2023. After the facility submitted a plan for corrections, the state certified Gabriel House’s continued operation through November of this year.
The Massachusetts State Legislature created a new commission last year to oversee assisted living residences. The body, the Assisted Living Residences Commission, discussed the fire at its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, a spokeswoman said.
Seven of the fire victims were identified: Rui Albernaz, 64; Ronald Codega, 61; Margaret Duddy, 69; Robert King, 78; Kim Mackin, 71; Richard Rochon, 78; and Eleanor Willett, 86. The names of two others, a 70-year-old woman and a 77-year-old man, were withheld as of Monday pending family notification.
The blaze was the deadliest in the state in 40 years, since a 1984 fire in a rooming house in Beverly that killed 15 people. The state’s deadliest fire on record dates to 1942, when a catastrophic blaze at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston killed nearly 500.
Of the 18 people who were treated at Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River, 10 had been discharged or were ready to be discharged on Tuesday, six remained hospitalized, and two had been transferred to Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, R.I., a spokeswoman said.
City officials in Fall River declined to provide any update on Tuesday on the housing status of people displaced by the fire, who were sheltering in a community center on Monday.
One resident who escaped the fire, Chris Bessette, 61, said he felt lucky to have family who would take him in.
“I feel bad for the ones who don’t have family,” he said. “It’s not easy to just have everything taken out from under you.”
Jenna Russell is the lead reporter covering New England for The Times. She is based near Boston.
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