Bedbugs, cigarettes, and a broken elevator: Life at Gabriel House before the fire

Boston Globe

06-08-2025

So began a normal Sunday at the Gabriel House in Fall River.
For many who lived there, life felt like a tragedy long before July 13, the night a fire broke out that killed 10 people and displaced dozens more. It was a home of last resort for some who had been homeless or could not afford anything else. For those who lived there, there was little to do beyond television and the occasional game of Monopoly; an elevator that always seemed to be down; infestations of mice, cockroaches, and bedbugs; and everywhere, the smell of cigarette smoke.
Gabriel House had a
In response to a detailed list of questions about living conditions at Gabriel House, owner Dennis Etzkorn said the facility has been found to be 'consistently in compliance with regulation, with rare exceptions that were promptly addressed.'
Still, there were bright spots of color that surfaced through the film of gray. Friendships — and romances — sparked. Nelson Gonzalez, the facility's maintenance man, was painstakingly refurbishing rooms after years of wear, replacing old rugs worn down from years of residents who were incontinent. Occasional activities, such as bingo or Bible study, lit up weekdays.
Gabriel House opened in 1999 on the site of a former motel, and sometimes it still felt like one — the modest rooms branching off the hallways and limited common areas.
Scott Allan lived on the first floor in a humbly furnished 10 x 17 room he jokingly called his 'garden apartment.' A stroke victim who uses a wheelchair, Allan, 63, maintained a glimmer of hope that someday he would leave this place. Others appeared to have accepted that Gabriel House, sparse and uncomfortable, was destined to be the last, difficult chapter of their lives.
Allan's daughter and granddaughter live in Portland, Maine, but they didn't have a chance to visit often, he said. Instead, his entertainment often came over the airwaves: services on Sundays, baseball as often as possible. On that Sunday, the Red Sox swept the Tampa Bay Rays at Fenway for their 10th straight win. It was perhaps the brightest spot in an otherwise average day.
Meanwhile, in Rui Albernaz's room, he and Debbie Bigelow
were bickering over his scratch ticket habit.
The two had been dating for years, and Bigelow said she had picked out a long green dress for when they got married someday. Albernaz was well known at Gabriel House and in the broader community: On his near-daily outings to Dunkin' Donuts, he always made the workers laugh. One Halloween he showed up in a lace dress and a wig. At Gabriel House, he and Bigelow played bean bag toss and did arts and crafts. Albernaz called everyone buddy, but Bigelow said she told him, 'I'm not a boy, call me 'babe.' '
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The scratchies, though, were a consistent source of tension. On that Sunday before the fire, Albernaz asked Bigelow for $11 for a scratch ticket, she recalled. She offered him $7. He called her 'cheap.'
Rui Albernaz, 64, one of the victims of the Fall River fire.
Alda Albernaz
'I was always getting after him' for the scratch tickets, Bigelow said. 'In the end I said, 'OK, you can play it.' '
Bigelow saw Albernaz at lunch,
but she didn't join him, she said.
It certainly wasn't the food that lit up residents' days at Gabriel House. Many complained of meals that were bland at best and inedible at worst.
The
The food offerings were particularly unappetizing for Donna Murphy, a longtime resident who worked for years for her family catering business. Murphy worked on food for the mills and for banquets, carving watermelons into elaborate baskets for big events. She was an amazing cook, said Nancy Jones, her sister. The bland offerings of Gabriel House were an insult she often declined.
' 'Can I go back there? Let me give you a hand,' ' Murphy would often joke of the modest facility kitchen, Jones recalled.
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When Murphy moved in five years ago, her family had stocked her room with cereal and other perishable snacks. Within days, mice had eaten through them, her sister said. Jones came back with secure plastic bins to protect the food from the rodents. Her sister still craved better food from the outside. Every Thursday, Murphy's son brought her hot dogs from JJ's on South Main Street, Jones said.
Sunday was an unusual day for Murphy: Her granddaughter picked her up that afternoon for a rare overnight stay at her house. The family has come to think of it as an act of God. Murphy, for her part, has been wracked by survivor's guilt, and was hospitalized for a panic attack.
By midday Sunday, Eleanor Willett, too, was enjoying family time. Some of the residents of Gabriel House were lonely, or drew few visits. Not Willett, who seemed always to be surrounded by family. Her daughter Terry Leuvelink came every other day, and that Sunday, Willett's son Paul visited. She spent a chunk of the afternoon with him and her great-great-grandson, Jamison. Around 1:15, she perched on her bed in a pink robe and posed with her arms around the boy. When her relatives left around 3:30 p.m., everything was normal. They didn't realize it was the last time they would see her alive.
Eleanor Willett (center) with daughter Terry Leuvelink (left) and granddaughter Holly Mallowes.
Holly Mallowes
While Gabriel House offered some activities, the time could pass slowly for those who didn't have family visiting. Residents watched television alone or together, or played games.
And they smoked — inside and outside, they smoked. Residents gathered in a covered part of the rear parking lot most days to smoke and chat. They gossiped like middle schoolers, Gonzalez said, including and especially the foursome he affectionately called the 'Golden Girls.' Pimentel liked to sit out back feeding pigeons, seagulls, and sparrows, and smoking.
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Residents were not supposed to smoke indoors, but everyone knew that they did. Family members might arrive to find full ashtrays in their loved ones' bedrooms. Gonzalez found burn marks on the walls in their rooms. Residents might be fined $25, but it was hardly a deterrent, and they didn't always pay. A certified nursing assistant said she once entered a resident's room to find her bed in flames. There were other risks, too: the appliances residents weren't supposed to have in their bedrooms, but seemed to anyway — toasters, coffee pots, air fryers.
Preliminary reports suggest the fire could have been caused by the presence of
Dinner always came early at Gabriel House.
The cook, who had been working since 3 that morning, headed home around 6:30 p.m. By then, residents were winding down, too. Neal Beck, 78, had been homeless before he came to Gabriel House three years ago. On that Sunday, he went to bed in his third floor room around 6 p.m., more than three hours before the fire would be called in.
'I'm an old guy,' Beck said. 'I go to bed early.'
Allan can't even remember if he attended dinner that day. He, too, was in bed by 7 p.m.
Pimentel finished dinner, watched TV, and played solitaire on his phone. He must have put the phone in his pocket. Hours later, when he emerged stunned from the flames, there it was. He was one of the few who left the ordeal with his phone.
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Like normal, Bigelow had dinner early. She took a shower and got ready for bed. On a normal night, Bigelow would have been with Albernaz, she said. They made love and talked a lot — 'time really flies when you're talking,' he used to tell her.
But not Sunday. Albernaz came down to ask if she'd join him in his room, but after their 'little scuffle' earlier in the day, she declined. She promised, though, to accompany him to a doctor's appointment on Wednesday. Neither knew the fire would take his life before that.
Albernaz returned to his third floor room without her.
Up on the third floor, Steven Oldrid was still awake. He'd been offered a room on the first floor when he moved in, but rejected it as dark, smelly, and dirty, said Robin Gouveia, a lawyer who is representing Oldrid in a
Oldrid was watching TV that Sunday night. CNN was airing a documentary about the Live Aid concert. He figured he'd go to bed when it was over.
Then Oldrid heard an alarm. It wasn't so unusual to hear it going off like that, in a facility that often felt noisy and chaotic. For months, decade-old smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors had been out of battery or out of service, bleeping and bleeping at residents while they tried to rest in their rooms. Recently, Gonzalez swore up and down, he had replaced the sensor in every single room with a new, functional combination smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector. Of this he was absolutely sure.
When the alarms started to go off, Oldrid thought little of it at first: They went off all the time. Then he heard yelling — also not so unusual. The residents had a range of needs and mental health statuses. To hear a commotion was not out of the ordinary.
Then Oldrid opened the door to thick, dark smoke. In his power chair, there was nowhere for him to go. Besides, he had read that he should stay put in case of emergency. He closed his door and waited.
A wheelchair sat in front of the shuttered Gabriel House beside the memorial for the fire victims on July 18.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
Emma Platoff can be reached at