A raging five-alarm fire ripped through large nursing home complex in West Chester, displacing scores of elderly and frail residents, many of whom were evacuated in wheelchairs and hospital beds wrapped in blankets against a cold night.
More than 12 hours after the fire broke out at the Barclay Friends Senior Living facility Thursday night, officials still had released any information about casualties, including whether anyone was dead or missing.
One man, Ken McGill, of West Chester, said his in-laws were missing and that facility administrators have not yet been able to locate them at any hospital or other facility taking in displaced Barclay Friends residents. He declined to identify them.
The cause of the fire is under investigation. Police said it apparently started in a unit housing residents with memory problems.
It took firefighters more than 2 ½ hours to bring the blaze under control, but hours later they were still dousing the smoldering ruins with water.
Many of the facility’s residents were pushed in wheelchairs and rolled on beds and ambulance litters to safety after the fire broke out around 10:46 p.m. Thursday.
Neighborhood residents in the meantime rushed to assist facility staff members, firefighters and police with the evacuation, working quickly to get the residents away from the raging blaze. Hypothermia was a concern as temperatures in the low 40s felt like 30s in the brisk winds.
First responders “made numerous rescues,” officials said.
Dispatchers called for ATVs about 1 a.m. to assist with the evacuation of patients from the care facility, a campus of several buildings located at 700 North Franklin St. Aerial photos of the facility show an L-shaped main building in front of a large, snowflake-shaped structure of at least seven residential pods all connected by long wings, common areas and gardens.
Barclay Friends is a wood frame structure without a basement and is “fully sprinklered,” according to Pennsylvania Department of Health building inspection reports. It has been cited for fire safety violations in the past, but they were quickly resolved.
The raging fire destroyed much of the roof while filling the sky with smoke and blanketing the area with the smell of burnt wood.
On one of the side streets, about a half-dozen ambulances were staged in a line to transport patients away.
The scene was orderly as rescuers and neighbors assisted the staff with the evacuees. Hypothermia was a concern as temperatures in the low 40s felt like 30s in the brisk winds.
Paul Swanson, who lives behind the facility, was sleep when he heard the fire trucks and his wife “scream something about a fire.”
It was 10:50 p.m. and his daughter had just dialed 911. He looked out his back window saw flames. Within in minutes, they were spreading along the roof, he said.
“They could hardly do anything to prevent it from spreading,” he said as he watched crews continue to pour water into the badly damaged building about nine hours after it was first reported. “It just burned a long time.”
By 3 a.m., about two dozen Barclay Friends residents were assembled at the Good Fellowship Ambulance Company at 600 Montgomery Ave., awaiting contact with relatives and friends. As they waited, ambulances and ATVs with patients brought more evacuees in.
One fire official estimated more than 200 people had been evacuated from the fire buildings and other units.
Relatives and friends were urged to go to the Goodwill Fire Company building for information about loved ones and where they might be sheltered.
One shelter was at West Chester University, where few dozen displaced residents had stayed there overnight before being placed in new facilities or reunited with family, said Red Cross regional communications manager Mar Torres. The last of the residents had been placed before 9 a.m.
“It was really organized,” Torres said. “A lot of kids from the university came over to help.”
She said she thinks some of the students heard about the fire on the news and wanted to assist in any way they could.
Residents were calm and not visibly injured when they started arriving around 1 a.m.,Torres said
Paoli Hospital said it had received seven residents and reported they were in fair condition Friday morning.
The blaze at Barclay Friends was reported at 10:46 p.m. and climbed to five alarms in about a half hour. At one points flames rose over the top of some of the buildings in the facility, which offers various levels of care from memory care and skilled nursing to post-acute rehabilitation.
Jim McGrady, 75, had just turned off the Pittsburgh Steelers football game when he looked out the window of his room in the Goshen Building at Barclay and saw people pushing patients.
“Little did I know, the place was on fire,” said McGrady, a former volunteer with the Berwyn Fire Company.
Soon, he said, someone came and took him from his room, saying “The place is on fire.”
McGrady, wrapped in blankets and sheets, said there was no smoke in his unit and that the evacuation was calm.
Outside, he said he saw fire coming through the roof of the Wollman Building.
He awaited an ambulance to take him from the scene.
Bob Reuther, an Owen Street neighbor of Barclay Friends, was at home late Thursday when his daughter came in and told him that the nursing facility was on fire.
As he walked toward the brick and frame buildings, Reuther said he saw about 30 other neighbors and staff going in and out of the buildings, pushing patients in chairs and beds up a hill.
He jumped in to assist, staying with McGrady to help him.
“The staff was incredible,” he said. The staffers were going through and checking every room for patients, he added.
Reuther said he and other neighbors stayed with the evacuated patients for about three hours, talking to them, giving them water and trying to keep them warm. He said neighbors were bringing blankets from their homes to warm the patients.
“They were lined up for a block,” he said.
At his particular triage area — on North Franklin and Ashbridge — Reuther estimated there were more than 100 patients assembled.
“It was amazing to watch people just walk in here and help,” he said. “The community really came out.”
Late into the evening, calls went out over police radio asking for ambulances and for area hospitals to prepare for incoming patients. As a fourth alarm sounded, area hospitals reported they were overwhelmed with patients and were unable to take any more.
One emergency dispatch said efforts to fight the blaze were hampered by a loss of water pressure.
The blaze brought a huge response of firefighters. Dave March, a spokesman for the Borough of West Chester, said as many as 50-60 trucks and 200 firefighters from as many as 30 companies rallied from around the Chester and Delaware County area.
Staff writers Erin McCarthy, Stacey Burling William Bender and staff photographer Steven M. Falk contributed reporting to this story.
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