FALL RIVER, MASS. (WHDH) - Ten people lost their lives when a fire spread through an assisted living facility last July.
A year after the tragic fire at Fall River’s Gabriel House, 7 Investigates looks at whether assisted living facilities have become safer because of what happened.
“It was home,” said Michael Pimentel, a former Gabriel House resident.
Today, Gabriel House is a boarded-up building.
The people who made it a home are gone.
But, for Pimentel, the terrifying moments of that night remain.
“I still have flashbacks and survivor’s guilt,” he admitted.
Pimentel still clearly remembers being in his second-floor apartment on July 13, 2025.
“I was in bed,” he said. “I smelled the smoke and then I heard evacuate, evacuate!”
For him, there was no easy way out. Pimentel has two prosthetic legs and uses a wheelchair.
While he was trapped inside, Pimentel made a desperate decision.
“I reached up the small bathroom window and I yanked the bottom out,” he said. “I was going to do anything I could. Break a window, whatever, smash a window; whatever to get the heck out.”
He remembered screaming out the window.
“People were screaming too, ‘please get us out. We’re going to die up here,” Pimentel recalled. “I really thought I was going to die.”
He survived. Pimentel was one of the 27 people pulled through windows and carried down ladders during the fire.
“It was chaotic. People were still screaming. It was awful,” he said.
7 Investigates obtained hours of exclusive body camera video showing the actions taken that July night during the frantic rush to rescue people from the smoke and flames.
In parts of the video, some residents seem unsure about what to do.
The owner of Gabriel House, Dennis Etzkorn, told 7 Investigates in a statement, “Our staff conducted six fire drills in 2025.”
At the time of the fire, state guidelines did require assisted living facilities to practice fire drills and evacuations with some staff members, but not with every worker and not with residents.
But now, because of this fire, Massachusetts officials have changed the rules. Beginning at the end of July, people living in assisted living facilities will be encouraged to take part in evacuation drills.
An investigation was launched by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) after the fire.
Federal investigators found a series of safety failures at Gabriel House. The violations stated that the facility “did not train employees to assist in a safe and orderly evacuation of other employees” and did not “review with each employee the company’s fire prevention plan.”
“What is important as we move forward is that we felt it was critical to really expand upon and enhance the emergency preparedness of all assisted living residents across the state,” said Robin Lipson, the secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Aging and Independence.
Lipson leads the agency that oversees assisted living facilities in Massachusetts.
She has worked alongside other state officials to implement other changes to state guidelines that require staff members to undergo more training, communicate more with fire departments, and develop more thorough emergency preparedness plans.
Following the Gabriel House fire, the state reached out to 272 assisted living facilities and asked them about their emergency plans. One in eight facilities indicated they needed to change them.
“We have tried in every possible way to learn from the horror of what happened and to prevent it going forward,” Lipson said.
Pimentel is one of the former residents suing Gabriel House and its sprinkler inspection company. He believes the lessons learned from this fire come at too high a price.
“That enrages me when I think about it. I try not to,” he said while reflecting on the loss of ten of his friends. “I want people to remember them as they lived, not as they died.”
Etzkorn told 7 Investigates that over the last year, the facility has worked with state and federal investigators to help them determine the cause of the fire and why it spread so quickly.
“We will continue our cooperation with the authorities as we seek answers to the questions they and many survivors and family members have,” Etzkorn said in a statement.
He also said he continues to mourn deeply for the fire victims.
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