Nine people killed in fire at Massachusetts assisted living facility

Flowers left outside of fire line tape at the fire-damaged Gabriel House, an assisted living facility, in Fall River, Mass., on Monday, July 14, 2025. Nine people were killed and one person was in critical condition after a large fire broke out at the assisted living facility on Sunday night, officials said. (Philip Keith/The New York Times)

By Jenna Russell and Heather Beasley Doyle

As a five-alarm fire engulfed an assisted living residence in Fall River, Massachusetts, on Sunday night, people watching from the sidewalk took in a scene of desperate chaos.

Firefighters and nurses scrambled to rescue elderly residents in wheelchairs, some with oxygen tanks, from thick smoke and flames. Other residents, trapped in upstairs apartments, smashed windows and screamed for help.

By the end, nine people were dead and one was in critical condition, officials said.

“This is an unfathomable tragedy for the families involved and for the Fall River community,” said Jeffrey Bacon, the city’s fire chief.

As various agencies began investigating the cause of the fire Monday, the union representing Fall River firefighters lashed out at the city, saying fewer people might have died if leaders had listened to their warnings, over decades, that department staffing was inadequate.

“If this was New Bedford, Boston, Worcester, there would have been 40 firefighters here initially — but there were only 32,” said Capt. Frank O’Regan, a member of the union who spoke to reporters at the scene Monday.

The difference, he said, was crucial in the urgent minutes before victims succumbed. “Probably five more people could have lived,” he said.

Responding to the criticism, Mayor Paul Coogan of Fall River said that he relied on the fire chief to recommend staffing levels, and that the department’s most recent staffing request had been fully met. How the department deploys its personnel to cover shifts is up to them, he added.

“Fall River is very resilient and we’re going to work our way through this,” he said.

Firefighters responded shortly after 9:30 p.m. Sunday to reports of a fire at the assisted living facility, Gabriel House, which has about 70 residents, Bacon said at a separate news conference Monday.

He called the response to the fire “tricky and chaotic,” saying that about 50 firefighters struggled to rescue trapped residents and douse the blaze.

Officials said the fire was contained to one wing of the building and that most of the damage inside was from smoke.

Chris Bessette, 61, a resident of the facility for the past eight years, said in an interview smoke filled his room on the third floor as the fire spread. In desperation, he opened his bathroom window and considered jumping down to a porch roof below. Just then, he said, a friend who used to work at the facility showed up with a ladder, climbed up to reach him and helped him to escape.

Bessette’s sisters, who did not know if he had lived or died until they found him Monday at a community center where survivors had been taken, called it “the hand of God” that saved him. His girlfriend died in the fire, Bessette said.

Kerry Leckey, 58, who moved into Gabriel House two months ago, said Monday that from her basement apartment, she had not seen any smoke or any sprinklers activated by the fire. She said she fled the building when the odor of smoke from higher floors became intense.

“The smell is what got me moving,” Leckey said at the community center. She and Bessette said the facility had frequent false alarms, which may have made some residents slow to respond.

Leckey said she lost several friends in the fire. Her voice broke as she recalled how quickly they had grown close after she moved in.

“It comes in waves,” she said of her emotions. “You see this stuff on TV, but it doesn’t really hit home until it happens to you.”

At the assisted living facility, the smell of smoke lingered in the air Monday. Workers boarded up broken windows in the back of the damaged building with sheets of plywood as neighbors stood outside watching.

Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts credited the efforts of emergency workers who carried residents who could not walk to safety.

“Given the vulnerability of this population, some of whom depended on oxygen tanks and wheelchairs, it’s unbelievable there wasn’t an even greater loss of life,” she told reporters at the scene.

Coogan said Monday that the building had sprinklers, and that fire alarms had sounded, but that emergency workers had not yet been able to check whether all warning systems were working properly. “The main concern was getting people out,” Coogan said. “It’s an old building.”

Gabriel House is part of a larger company, Gabriel Care LLC, that also operates adult foster care services in Fall River and western Massachusetts, online records show.

In 2015, the Massachusetts attorney general accused the company’s principal owner, Dennis Etzkorn, of offering illegal kickbacks in exchange for the referral of new members of MassHealth, the state health insurance program for uninsured residents, to his foster care business. The case resulted in a $950,000 settlement, under which the company did not admit or deny any wrongdoing. The state dismissed its charges as part of the agreement.

The company did not immediately respond to an interview request Monday.

Officers from the Fall River Police Department were the first emergency workers to arrive, according to Sgt. Ross Aubin, a Police Department spokesperson. They ran into the building and rescued more than 12 residents who were not able to walk out on their own, he said.

Fall River — a working-class city of about 94,000 with a large immigrant population, including many people of Portuguese descent — set up a shelter for displaced residents of the facility.

Several residents were pronounced dead at the scene, according to Jake Wark, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services.

Gabriel House opened in 1999 and has 100 units, according to records from the state of Massachusetts. All its residents were displaced by the fire, Wark said.

Coogan praised the quick work and collaboration of the city’s emergency workers. “As bad as it was,” he said, “it could have been a heck of a lot worse.”