By Charlie McKenna
masslive.com
FALL RIVER, Mass. — A trio of residents who lived at the Gabriel House assisted living facility in Fall River when a fire broke out and killed 10 people last month filed suit on Thursday against the facility’s owner and the third-party company responsible for inspecting its fire systems.
The lawsuit, filed by the firm Morgan and Morgan in Bristol Superior Court, claims the facility “turned into a death trap.” It names the facility, its owner, Dennis Etzkorn and the company, Fire Systems, Inc., as defendants.
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The residents, Patricia Martin, Terry Young and Donna Murphey, suffered physical and emotional injuries because of the fire, and have ongoing expenses for their care and relocation.
The day after the fire, Murphey told reporters the facility’s owner “didn’t care about people’s lives.”
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs claim Etzkorn was negligent in part because he knew or should have known that residents often smoked in their rooms despite many being on medical oxygen, and that some smoked while being administered oxygen therapy.
Officials have said the deadly blaze was caused by either the failure of an oxygen purifier or improper disposal of smoking materials. While the cause is undetermined, it is undisputed that the oxygen in the building contributed to the scale of the tragedy.
“There’s truly no safe way to smoke, but smoking is especially dangerous when home oxygen is in use,” State Fire Marshal Jon M. Davine said at a press conference last week. “No one should smoke around medical oxygen.”
Fire officials have not disclosed the exact unit where the fire broke out, but said it erupted in a second-story room on the east side of the east wing of the U-shaped building. The resident whose room the fire broke out in was among the 10 killed.
The lawsuit claims there was a no-smoking policy at Gabriel House that was not meaningfully enforced. There were few consequences for residents caught smoking, including those who were caught smoking while being administered oxygen, according to the complaint.
Etzkorn “negligently failed to provide appropriate supervision and monitoring of the residents receiving care for safe smoking practices,” the suit reads.
A spokesperson for Etzkorn did not immediately return a request for comment on the claims in the lawsuit. In his last public statement, Etzkorn said, “my sole concerns, and all that matters right now, are helping investigators determine all the facts and circumstances of this tragedy, and helping our residents’ loved ones in this unbearable time of immense grief.
The lawsuit also claims the facility lacked an emergency preparedness plan, despite one being required by law. Multiple residents and staff members have told MassLive they never participated in any fire drills at the facility.
Etzkorn has drawn considerable scrutiny since the fire broke out. But the third-party company responsible for inspecting the fire safety systems inside Gabriel House had not previously been identified.
Fire Systems, Inc., which is based in North Dartmouth, “improperly installed and maintained” the fire panel, fire pump and sprinkler system at Gabriel House, and those systems “failed to operate reasonably” at the time of the fire.
A message left for Fire Systems, Inc. on Friday was not immediately returned.
Etzkorn has said the systems were inspected and given the all-clear just five days before the fire.
But the suit claims residents at the facility didn’t have access to a properly installed, mounted and/or maintained fire extinguisher or fire suppression system.
“Gabriel House turned into a death trap,” said Morgan & Morgan founder John Morgan and attorney Luke Mitcheson. “Our lawsuit alleges the owner and the fire safety company he contracted with knew it, and yet they failed to act in time to save the facility’s vulnerable residents from death and permanent injuries.”
“We will stop at nothing to achieve justice for the people and families impacted,” the lawyers continued.
The lawsuit also claims that window air conditioning units at the facility were too large and made it difficult for residents to evacuate safely from their rooms.
A Fall River firefighter who responded to the scene told MassLive that he and others had “great difficulty” removing air conditioner units that were screwed into windows.
“Each one of those took an extended period of time to get the ladder, put the ladder up, get the member to knock the window out, the air conditioner, enter the room, search the room, locate a victim, extricate the victim,” said Michael O’Reagan, the president of the local firefighters union.
The suit filed on Thursday marks at least the second such claim to be filed against Etzkorn and Gabriel House in the weeks following the July 13 fire, the deadliest residential fire in Massachusetts in decades.
Documents released this week by the state showed Gabriel House was suspended in 2016, following an undisclosed incident that presented an “immediate threat to the health, safety or welfare of its residents.”
State and city records — such as compliance reports, corrective actions and submitted complaints — show concerns dating back a decade-plus and include prolonged elevator outages, cockroaches, rodents and an absence of emergency and evacuation planning.
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