Nursing Home Blaze Kills 10 and Injures 23 in Connecticut

A fire possibly caused by arson raced through a nursing home early Wednesday, leaving 10 residents dead and 23 people injured. Police detained a 23-year-old patient at the facility for questioning.

On a bitterly cold morning, the fire broke out about 2:30 at the Greenwood Health Center, a rehabilitation and special-care facility housing 148 patients in the capital city’s West End.

Fire and rescue crews evacuated about 100 patients -- many bedridden or in wheelchairs -- and moved them to another part of the building. Ten of the victims were in critical condition.

Fire Chief Charles Teale praised a nursing supervisor, Marion Schumacher, for refusing to leave her post, despite burns and smoke inhalation, until she knew that patients in her area were being safely removed. She was one of three workers injured in the fire.

Within hours of the blaze, police had taken a female resident of the nursing home into custody. “There will be a lot of questions if her mental capacity was a factor,” Police Lt. Michael Manzi said of the unidentified woman, who was taken to a local hospital for a mental evaluation.

State and local officials said they had launched a criminal probe, and arson investigators were on the scene by midmorning. Chief State’s Atty. Chris Morano said a search warrant had been obtained, but he would not give details.

“It’s certainly the worst fire we’ve had in the city of Hartford for several decades,” Teale said.

Fire Marshal William Abbott said the building didn’t have a sprinkler system, but was not required to have one. The home, built in 1969, did have extinguishers and was up to code, he added. At a news conference with Teale and other officials at City Hall, Mayor Eddie Perez offered his city’s prayers and condolences to the victims and their families.

“The people of Hartford are with you and will help you overcome the tragedy,” Perez said. Those who died ranged in age from 17 to 76.

The fire came less than a week after a devastating nightclub blaze in neighboring Rhode Island in which 97 people died and more than 180 were injured. A state grand jury began questioning witnesses Wednesday in connection with that fire.

Families began converging on the Hartford facility after dawn, hoping for word of relatives.

For some, it was a nerve-racking wait of several hours. The facility was cordoned off as a crime scene, and family members were forced to wait outside in idling buses brought in to shelter them from the cold. Some family members jumped off the buses and looked through the nursing home’s windows to find loved ones.

That’s how Debbie and Donald Duford found her 53-year-old brother, Bill Carroll, a mentally retarded man with a lung ailment. “We expected the worst, but reminded ourselves that he was ambulatory,” she said. “He said he wasn’t scared.”

Donna Smith, who had rushed from her home in Newington to check on her elderly father, spotted him through a front window of the facility, then bent down and kissed the snow left over from last week’s storm. “Oh Lord! Thank you, Jesus!” she cried.

Across the parking lot, however, Luis Henriquez received word that his 17-year-old son, Daniel, who had been in a coma for three years, had died in the fire.

In addition to elderly residents, the nursing home cares for psychiatric and mentally retarded patients, as well as those in comas.

At area hospitals, staff members moved into disaster mode after initial calls that they might receive as many as 50 victims, said Dr. Ricardo L. Sanchez, chairman and system director of emergency medicine at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center. Dr. Robert Powers, chief of emergency medicine at Hartford Hospital, said the 11 patients who arrived there were chronically ill elderly people.

“This is going to complicate their recovery,” he said. “These were people sick enough to be in a nursing home with underlying medical problems.”

An attendant who refused to give her name was close to tears as she emerged from the home Wednesday night. “It’s been a long day,” she said. “I’m very tired. I just want to go home.”

She said that many of the other patients in the home seemed to be holding up well.

Two grief counselors who emerged from the facility said staff members were very upset. “There were people who lived there for 15 years,” said one of the counselors, who declined to give his name. “They [staff members] are like on auto-pilot trying to help out.”

He said the southeastern wing, where the fire occurred, was badly charred. Hours after the blaze, the smell of smoke still lingered in the cold night air.

*

Mulligan reported from New York, Goldman from Hartford. This story includes material from Associated Press and the Hartford Courant.