In Fall River, a hellish nightmare of a fire

Boston Globe

4 days ago

Some residents were already in bed and panic quickly set in as some felt trapped in their rooms. Many were elderly, and some were in wheelchairs or had limited mobility or other health complications.
Terrified residents made multiple 911 calls, fearful they were going to die surrounded by flames and smoke.
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A desperate race to save lives
The first firefighters were dispatched at 9:39 p.m. and arrived in five minutes. Fire was visible, and plumes of toxic, black smoke billowed from the building on Oliver Street; residents were hanging out of the windows, desperate to be rescued.
'It's the Gabriel House, it's completely up in flames,' one first responder reported to dispatch.
By then police officers were also inside, combing through the building to get residents to leave.
'We need you out!' shouted one officer at 9:44 p.m., according to body camera footage. 'There's a huge fire. Big fire.'
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In police body camera footage, first responders help a person escape the smoke from Gabriel House. (Randy Vazquez/Globe staff)
This reconstruction of the deadliest fire in Massachusetts since 1984 is based on interviews with more than 20 people who were at the scene, including many residents, interviews with former workers of Gabriel House, police body cam footage, recordings of public safety dispatches, and other official sources.
Visibility was near zero as smoke rapidly filled the building. People were screaming for help; some stayed in their rooms and called loved ones, some invoked the Almighty, and some were able to break open windows on their own or were rescued when firefighters tore apart windows and doors to get people out.
For 68-year-old Debbie Bigelow, escape came with a bang on her door and first responders yelling for her to 'Get out!'
She was barefoot and dressed only in a nightgown; they led her out an emergency door and then wrapped blankets around her shoulders to keep her warm.
'I'm glad it was in the summer and not in the winter,' Bigelow said.
The fire would claim the life of her longtime boyfriend, Rui Albernaz.
'He didn't get burnt, did he?' she asked the official who told her Albernaz died in the blaze. 'I don't like smoke inhalation either, but getting burnt and flames, that's terrible.'
She described Albernaz as joyful and charming. He didn't get into arguments at Gabriel House like other residents, she said. They had no secrets, and she hoped they would marry one day.
'I miss him,' she said this week after a funeral Mass for Albernaz.
In her room at Fall River HealthCare, Debbie Bigelow held up the funeral card for Gabriel House resident Rui A. Albernaz, who died in the fire.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
Like Albernaz,
Gabriel House residents were typical New Englanders. One man visited a local Dunkin' so frequently staff knew his regular order: a croissant sandwich and iced coffee. Others were Vietnam War veterans, one would be later described as a 'tough cookie' with a robust sense of humor and another would be eulogized for his warmth and keen social intelligence. A great-grandmother was recalled as
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Among the 10 who died from the fire was an 86-year-old grandmother, Eleanor Willett, who had lived at Gabriel House for just shy of a year.
For as long as Willett lived in room C15, one of its two windows didn't function properly, said her granddaughter, Holly Mallowes.
'They were supposed to fix it, and they never did,' said Mallowes. 'So that window wouldn't open.'
Many other rooms, meanwhile, had air-conditioning units in their windows, which complicated rescue efforts.
Hearing that people were trapped on the third floor, one Fall River fire captain rushed into the burning building without an air tank and kicked in a door. There were bodies in some of the rooms, he would later say.
Clues emerge in a complex investigation
Some residents said they saw sprinklers go off in some parts of the building but not others. The owner of Gabriel House would later say the sprinkler system was checked just days before the fatal inferno, and a maintenance worker said that smoke alarms were updated in recent weeks. The annual fire inspection of Gabriel House, which includes checking the sprinkler system, was completed on Aug. 9, 2024, according to public records. The fire alarms passed inspection on Aug. 7, 2024, the fire department said.
The cause of the fire is thought to be accidental and not suspicious, authorities have said. This week, authorities zeroed in on one room, on the east side of the building, where they found 'numerous smoking materials' and an oxygen concentrator, a medical device that increases the amount of oxygen in the air a patient breathes but can fuel flames when exposed to embers.
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Investigators have declined to identify the room or the residents who lived there. Additionally, Jeffrey Bacon, the Fall River fire chief, said he
was 'interested' to learn how smoke infiltrated the other side of the building so heavily.
Smoking inside the facility was common, according to those who lived and worked there. Residents would often sneak into the bathroom to smoke a cigarette, according to one worker. A former worker, meanwhile, said she once walked into a room to find a bed in flames.
'I dreaded a building fire,' said Bianca DeJesus, who worked at Gabriel House as a certified nursing assistant and dietary aide from 2019 until last fall.
Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan
said he was told by Gabriel House owner Dennis D. Etzkorn that smoking was not permitted inside the building and that residents caught smoking inside had been fined in the past. There was a designated smoking area outside.
One former resident said the $25 fine did not deter some residents from smoking inside.
Fall River Fire Chief Jeffrey Bacon (center) along with police, fire investigators, and a priest (left) gathered at the entrance to the Gabriel House Assisted Living facility on Oliver Street in Fall River Monday morning.
MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
In one lawsuit filed since the fire, a lawyer for one resident who allegedly lost consciousness during the fire, said smoke alarms went off regularly at Gabriel House and the facility lacked an 'effective evacuation plan.'
'So when the smoke alarms went off, it was almost just another day, and there was no effective plan to say, 'Hey, this one's real. You got to get out,'' said attorney Robin Gouveia.
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An Etzkorn spokesman, George K. Regan Jr., said Tuesday in response to the lawsuit: 'In this situation, there is nothing else to say.'
Etzkorn himself has not granted interviews since the fire. But on Friday he released a statement through Regan that spoke of the 'unimaginable pain and the ultimate loss' of the 10 victims and their family members.
'My sole concerns, and only responsibilities continue to be helping authorities determine all the facts and circumstances of this tragedy, as well as establishing a system to help these families recover their loved ones' possessions,' said Etzkorn, adding that he expected all possessions would be returned to residents by the end of next week. 'All that matters right now is getting to the bottom of why this happened and helping our residents' loved ones in this darkest of times.'
'I thought this was it': Residents recall terror and rescues
Ernest Coupe, whose health issues over the years included a bout with oral cancer that requires him to use a feeding tube, was on the floor of his bathroom in Gabriel House as the facility filled with smoke. He previously was instructed to stay in his room in the case of a fire and to close the door. That's what he did.
He called his ex-wife, Kathy St. Pierre, saying he was going to die. Smoke was filling up his room and he was choking. He was not strong enough to push his air conditioner out of his window.
Ultimately, firefighters were able to break the window and pull Coupe to safety.
Scott Allan, 63, lived on the bottom floor. He awoke when he heard knocking at the door — firefighters with axes were trying to get in.
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'Lots of flames,' he said, 'coming out of these windows out front, flames coming out of the porch.'
In those initial moments, the smoke was so thick some firefighters could not see their hands in front of their faces.
Neal Beck sat in his room at Fall River HealthCare on July 24. He was displaced by the Gabriel House fire.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
Neal Beck was in bed in his third-floor room when the fire alarms went off. Opening his door, he found the 'whole place is full of smoke' and smelled of burnt rugs and plastic.
He thought about jumping out the window, but then firefighters climbed up a ladder, broke the window, and pulled him out.
'God was on my side and I was able to get out,' Beck said.
Lorraine Ferrara, a 71-year-old resident of Gabriel House for eight months, was on the second floor when a worker 'banged' on her door. When she opened it, the smoke 'blew me back,' she said.
Ferrara could not get to the exit, and her room was quickly filling with smoke, she said. She grabbed a towel and covered her nose.
'I thought I was going to die,' she said. 'I thought this was it.'
She was eventually carried out of the room by a firefighter on a ladder who broke through her window to pull her out. She doesn't remember being carried out of the building, and when she came to, she was across the street looking back at the chaos.
'It was just a nightmare,' she said. 'All the ambulances and firetrucks. People screaming. It was crazy.'
Meanwhile, at a nearby house,
Cleber Parra, 40, was playing volleyball with a group of his friends in his backyard when he heard sirens and saw red and blue emergency lights bouncing off the buildings of his neighborhood.
At first, he thought 'it was nothing crazy,' because he usually sees the Fire Department respond quickly. But he soon realized the situation was more serious when he could hear people calling for help.
Cleber Parra (left) and his brother-in-law Danny Auqui sat on the steps of their home near Gabriel House assisted living facility. The two men helped rescue residents during the deadly fire after hearing cries for help while playing late-night volleyball in their backyard.
Erin Clark/Globe Staff
A construction worker, Parra grabbed two ladders from atop a van and ran toward the Gabriel House, placing them along the right side of the building. He climbed up one, and saw an old man through the window.
'He looked just scared, like he was thinking he was going to die over there,' Parra said from his front porch, the assisted living facility just behind his house.
At first, Parra broke the windows using his hands. Then a firefighter took over and switched places with him only to struggle to get the resident out of the window..
The firefighter 'tried to pull the old man out, but he can't,' Parra said. 'The old man is heavy.'
It was a team effort. The firefighter climbed through the window and hoisted the resident out so Parra could bring him down the ladder.
'He's a little hard to bring down, because it's an old man,' Parra said. 'I brought (him) down, and my other friend brought down another person from another window.'
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In police body camera footage, firefighters are seen rescuing an unidentified person from Gabriel House. (Randy Vazquez/Globe staff)
An unthinkable loss of life
A neighbor, Peter Primo, 69,
said the scene he saw when he stepped onto his porch was so nightmarish that he can't imagine ever forgetting it.
'It was like my Blizzard of '78,' he added. 'You'll never forget where you were when this [expletive] happens.'
There was smoke everywhere and against this murky backdrop frenzied scenes of firefighters in motion.
'They're breaking the windows,' Primo said. 'They were pulling people, you could hear the firemen, 'Watch my light, follow my light. I need a stretcher up here.' It was crazy.'
Primo said air conditioners were falling out of some windows but that 'too many' were still in place and blocking the rescue efforts.
An air conditioner was in the charred window of the Gabriel House facility on July 14.
MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
'And the most morbid part was when they were bringing the bodies, and they were putting them in the back there,' Primo added. 'It was just, 'wow.' Playing out right under your nose.'
Primo saw five bodies moved to a tent behind Gabriel House. At the scene, survivors and neighbors were in tears.
'It's still the somber scent that lingers,' Primo said. 'Ten people, not two, not three, but 10. Those people had every intention of waking up the next day, and it didn't happen.'
Ken Medeiros, who lives directly behind Gabriel House, recalled looking out his back window around 9:50 p.m. to see flashing lights from firetrucks.
The 70-year-old Medeiros went out to his backyard and watched as evacuated residents from the facility stood in groups in a parking lot across the street. He saw ladders propped against the side of the building, but no one was being evacuated at that point. There were no flames at the moment, but the smoke made everything 'hazy.'
Unlike more modern nursing homes and higher-end assisted living facilities, Gabriel House was in an older building dating to the 1960s that once was a motel. Medeiros remembered once visiting a friend and noticing there were individual air conditioners in every window.
A resident of the Gabriel House reacted after being evacuated after the fire late Sunday night.
MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
'That was their only way out,' Medeiros said of the windows. 'Picture a jail cell with one way out.'
Still, body cam footage shows the many ways first responders did find a way to evacuate most of the residents. Through a thick haze that Fire Chief Bacon described as 'toxic,' some residents were thrown over shoulders, others wheeled out in their wheelchairs; another was taken down the stairs in a stretcher after being instructed to lay down as if they were sledding on a toboggan.
Exhaustion sets in
One resident who was using a walker and oxygen tank trundled onto a porch of the facility as smoke poured out of a doorway. An officer dove through a window to check a room for residents. A firefighter split open another entryway with an axe. At 9:54 p.m., some police could be seen crawling underneath the smoke, according to body camera footage.
Officers could be heard grunting with physical exertion as they carried people down flights of stairs, alarms chirping in the background.
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In police body camera footage, first responders break open a door and are confronted with smoke. (Randy Vazquez/Globe staff)
At 9:55 p.m., some police officers had walked out onto a porch and were bent over, wretching and coughing from the smoke.
'Cover your mouth if you can,' one officer said in the video.
At a little after 10 p.m., Fall River fire chaplain the Rev. Michael Racine arrived at the scene. He administered the sacrament of the sick, a Roman Catholic ritual, to five people pulled out of the building, he said. All were deceased.
One person was carried down a ladder in a stretcher but was already dead, Racine was told. He found himself in an area near the facility that was turned into a makeshift morgue. First responders would stand by the bodies until they could be moved later in the night.
'I use the term 'organized chaos' because it was,' he said. 'It's a very chaotic situation because there's a lot going on. You had firefighters putting out the fire, and you had a ton of firefighters and police officers bringing victims out, both alive and deceased.'
Amid the public safety jargon on the crackling audio, dispatch recordings capture the urgency of those rescue efforts.
'We got to get to the far room,' one firefighter said sometime after 10 p.m., clearly out of breath. A reply came across the radio that the room would be reached using a ladder.
Another request surged through the airwaves: 'I need a paramedic and stretcher to the rear of the building immediately.'
Then yet another: 'Get as many medical rescues to this location as soon as possible.'
One resident described firefighters and police officers with ripped uniforms, bloodied and covered in soot.
The fire would eventually reach five alarms and require help from neighboring communities. It would take about an hour to bring it under control, according to Fall River officials. The last of the more than 30 injured residents would eventually be sent to the hospital later in the night.
At 10:32 p.m., a police supervisor took roll call to account for all the responding officers.
'We have everybody.'
Flowers, photographs, and memorial items were placed along the chain-link fence surrounding Gabriel House on July 23.
Erin Clark/Globe Staff
Ken Mahan and Christopher Gavin of the Globe staff and Globe correspondents Maria Probert and Angela Mathew contributed to this report.
Graphics by John Hancock/Globe staff. Video production by Randy Vazquez/Globe staff.
Danny McDonald can be reached at