FALL RIVER, MASS. (WHDH) - A year after a deadly fire tore through an assisted living facility in Fall River, 7 Investigates obtained hours of never-before-seen body camera footage detailing the response through the eyes of the first responders.
It was just after 9:30 p.m. on July 13, 2025, when the fire alarm sounded at the Gabriel House.
Within minutes, the first police officers arrive on the scene and activate their body cameras.
“It’s the Gabriel House. It’s completely up in flames,” one officer is heard saying over his radio.
Fire, fear and a frantic search for survivors are captured in those initial moments.
“People are screaming everywhere,” Fall River Police Officer Tre’Quan Gardner remembered.
“It felt like a combat zone,” said Fall River Police Officer Brandon Andrade.
The video shows officers rushing inside Gabriel House. They kick in doors, desperate to locate the nearly 70 people inside the building.
Outside, flames shoot out of a second-story window. Inside, some hallways fill with smoke.
With no time to wait, police officers enter the building without protective gear or breathing equipment.
“I’m like, ‘screw it, we’ve got to go in.’ Yes, we don’t have the proper equipment, and we’re not really trained to fight fires, but we’re at the service of others. We have to put others first. That is the job we signed up for,” Officer Gardner said, reflecting on the split-second decision to enter the burning building.
The conditions inside vary throughout the building. In one hallway, water drips down on them and puddles on the floor. In another hallway, smoke blinds them as it billows throughout the facility.
“As we went up floor to floor, the smoke got darker and darker and darker,” explained Fall River Police Officer Jimmie Page. “We’d go inside the building, you couldn’t see anything, you could just hear ‘I’m in here’ ‘I’m in here.’”
“At one point, the smoke is so thick that I’m trying to crawl and I am counting the door frames as I go down the hallway because we could hear somebody screaming at the end of the hall, but we didn’t know where she was,” remembered Fall River Detective Sgt. Shane Galus.
As rescue efforts continue, first responders quickly realize many of the residents who are old, sick and have trouble moving are stranded inside, some on the top floors.
Windows are shattered. Air conditioning units are torn out of windows.
Firefighters rescue people from their windows and carry them down ladders. Police officers hold the ladders and are handed the victims by the firefighters.
“Like a conveyor just trying to get everyone out that we can,” Page said.
The operation is a delicate one. Many of the residents cannot walk by themselves.
“There was a lot of carrying, a lot of improvising to get these people out,” Galus said.
Video shows officers carrying people in their wheelchairs down a set of stairs. One man is carefully guided down the staircase on a rescue sled while another person, too heavy to be carried, is lowered to the ground using a set of ropes.
These intricate maneuvers cost rescuers precious time. As the minutes tick by, residents are found unconscious or worse.
As initial rescue efforts wind down, we see some police officers struggling with all the smoke they’ve inhaled.
“You are trying to gauge how long you can stay in there without becoming part of the problem,” Galus said.
Officers are seen coughing and kneeling over.
“It’s one, impossible to see and two, you’re hacking up half of your lung afterward,” Fall River Police Detective Mohammed Adelakun remembered.
“You can’t breathe. You’re just gasping for small gulps of oxygen to hold your breath till the next gulp,” Andrade said.
When the body cameras stop recording, the heartbreak is just beginning.
“They didn’t ask for this and some of them probably didn’t even know what was going on until the moment they realized I’m dying,” Gardner reflected.
Police officers and firefighters rescued 53 people that night, but ten died in the fire.
“It’s the job that we signed up for, but it’s the call that you wish that you never had to go to,” Gardner said.
A year later, the call still sticks with them. Change is coming locally and across the state because of what happened that night. In parts two and three of this series, 7 Investigates goes deeper into what’s being done to keep people safe.
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