Senators hear distressing details of fatal fire

Maryville fire officials told a Senate panel Wednesday that the intense heat from the January fire, which killed five residents and injured 10 others, kept rescuers from getting into the building.

Firefighters said they could hear the carnage in the background of radio transmissions, and offered chilling details about finding an elderly resident’s body by the door of Home Away From Home.

“She sat down and waited on someone to come in and help her and get her out,” Maryville Fire Chief Ed Mitchell said. “By that time, the flames were absolutely outrunning any rescue attempt to get back in there.

“The lady perished at that position, sitting in the chair, waiting for help to arrive.”

He said sprinklers would have saved lives that night.

Lawmakers are considering legislation that would require sprinkler systems and other safety measures at all nursing homes, residential homes for the aged and assisted living centers. Now only newer or newly renovated facilities must have sprinklers.

Home Away from Home was licensed as a residential home for the aged, which serves elderly residents who don’t need the level of care a nursing home provides.

Firefighters and emergency workers could hear screams from inside the building, state senators were told. Some residents were pulled out through windows, and a few made it out the front door.

No vote was taken on the legislation at the Wednesday hearing. The legislation was prompted by the Maryville fire, and a Sept. 25 nursing home fire in Nashville where eight residents were killed and seven others died in the months following.

Mitchell said more people have died in fires in nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and residential homes for the elderly in Tennessee than in any other state in the past five years. The state ranks second in the nation in all fire-related fire deaths.

“This doesn’t say much for how we are doing our business and how we are protecting our people of all ages,” Mitchell said in Thursday’s edition of The Tennessean.

First responders were on the scene at the Maryville fire in just over two minutes, Mitchell said, but flames 30 feet high were already shooting out.

“People were screaming inside,” Mitchell said.

“These elderly people are simply not capable of exiting a facility in the time they would need to exit it,” he said. “Most of them were already asleep and retired for the evening. Some had already taken evening medication. All of these things slow down the response of getting out of this facility.”