Fall River, ME, Fire Anniversary Met with Emotion, Push for Sprinkler Code Changes
Hadley Barndollar
masslive.com
(TNS)
FALL RIVER — Fire Chief Jeff Bacon sees a permanent fissure in his department’s identity: before July 13, 2025, and after.
And yet, Bacon said the anniversary of the Gabriel House blaze — a historic scar on the South Coast city from the loss of 10 lives — snuck up on him this year.
That night, Bacon and his firefighters, along with the city’s police officers, fought tooth and nail to quell the flames and smoke overtaking the assisted living facility. The building was home to dozens of vulnerable, mostly low-to-middle-income residents. Many had mobility challenges and had to be dragged through windows or carried down flights of stairs.
Monday marks the one-year anniversary of the five-alarm fire at 261 Oliver Street that quickly became national news. It was Massachusetts’ deadliest fire in more than 40 years.
Among the many ways the fire department will honor the victims — and its own traumas — this week, one carries the weight of the future: a new partnership with the National Fire Sprinkler Association that could save lives in years to come.
The Fall River Fire Department and national industry organization are launching an ambitious effort to change national and state codes governing sprinkler inspections — by requiring specific checks for recalled sprinkler heads.
“The process (to change the codes) isn’t simple, but essentially the ask is that your annual sprinkler check includes a box that says there are no recalled sprinklers present in this system,” Bacon said.
Since the blaze, Bacon has been unwavering in his public message: working sprinklers inside Gabriel House could have rewritten history. Instead, the sprinkler in the resident room where the fire started wasn’t functioning and the building was chock-full of sprinkler heads that were recalled more than two decades ago by the Central Sprinkler Company.
The sprinkler system had also gone without its required five-year internal inspection, according to previous reporting by MassLive.
Fall River Fire Capt. Joshua Hetzler is the technical brains behind the effort to get the codes changed, and he’s working it from multiple angles — nationally and at the state level.
If they are successful, the process could take anywhere from six months to three years.
“The scary thing to me is, because this is still under investigation, they have been unable to tell you how many sprinklers did not go off,” Hetzler said. “I think people would be shocked. I only think one person would have lost their life if the sprinklers would have been working.”
No one feels the weight of that statement more than Michael Pimentel, a Gabriel House resident who lost several friends in the fire. He was pleased to hear about the fire department’s latest advocacy. “I think it’s a really good thing,” he said.
In a statement, Shane Ray, president of the National Fire Sprinkler Association, said the proper upkeep of sprinkler systems is “essential to protecting lives and property.”
Last week, members of the association, including Ray, were at the Fall River Fire Department to host a sprinkler demonstration that featured a replica of a Gabriel House resident room. They set the room on fire twice — once with working sprinklers and once without — to show how the death toll could have been starkly different.
In a statement ahead of the one-year anniversary, George K. Regan Jr., a spokesperson for Gabriel House and owner Dennis Etzkorn, expressed sympathy.
“For a quarter of a century, Gabriel House worked hard to provide a home for many people who truly needed one. Our residents were more than tenants — they were our neighbors, our friends and part of our unique Gabriel House family. We still mourn their loss deeply, and forever will."
A quest to change fire safety codes
According to Hetzler, the Gabriel House fire exposed a major gap in fire safety codes: no one is actively checking for recalled sprinkler heads.
The issue has become front and center in ongoing litigation related to the fire, as more than 30 people, both survivors and family members of the deceased, seek damages. In cross-claims filed in December, Etzkorn and his contracted fire safety company, Fire Systems Inc., went head-to-head over who was responsible for the presence of recalled sprinklers.
Fire Systems Inc. said an inspector in September 2024 identified recalled sprinkler heads, and that many attempts were made to alert Etzkorn and his staff. Etzkorn, however, claimed that notifications never reached him or anyone involved in the building’s care and maintenance.
Both Etzkorn and Fire Systems Inc. claim the other’s inaction around the recalled heads directly led to the deaths of 10 people.
Under current National Fire Protection Association standards, which are adopted as state law in Massachusetts, the legal responsibility for identifying and replacing recalled sprinkler heads — and sprinkler maintenance in general — lies with property owners, not contractors or inspectors.
“If (an inspector) happens to come across them, the only thing in the code is that you have to notify the owner,” Hetzler said. “What they do with that information is entirely up to them. It should be considered a deficiency that needs to be corrected immediately.”
But in last week’s statement, Etzkorn’s spokesperson again shifted responsibility for the sprinkler failures onto Fire Systems Inc. He said the sprinkler system had been inspected just five days before the fire, and at that time, no concerns were raised about the recalled heads or the system’s operation.
He noted additional inspections occurred in February and April 2025 without mention of the recall. The building also passed the city of Fall River’s annual inspection in August 2024.
Hetzler is pursuing changes primarily through NFPA 25, the national standard governing the inspection, testing and maintenance of water-based fire protection systems, issued by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).
He recently submitted a “tentative interim amendment” to speed up the lengthy process, which typically takes three years. Hetzler argues the issue poses an imminent life-safety risk and shouldn’t be deferred to the normal code revision cycle.
His strongest argument? There have already been deadly consequences — the 10 people who perished at Gabriel House.
“Some people lost their lives in Fall River,” Hetzler said. “This is real.”
His proposal — a mere few sentences of very specific language — would require inspectors to check a building’s sprinkler heads against a list of recalls every inspection cycle. A sprinkler system with recalled heads would be considered “impaired” and require immediate attention.
- Read more: A replica Gabriel House room was lit on fire — twice. What the chilling demonstration showed
To submit an amendment through the expedited process, Hetzler needed the backing of two members of an NFPA 45-member technical committee.
He traveled to Utah and California to speak to members of the National Fire Sprinkler Association about his proposal, and ultimately received sponsorship from one of them. His second sponsor is a local firefighter from North Attleboro who also sits on the NFPA technical committee.
The fastest turnaround for a ruling on the tentative interim amendment will be 6 to 9 months. Complicating matters, though, is that the change would likely only apply to the latest version of NFPA 25.
Hetzler said it’s rare for the association’s technical committee to retroactively apply changes to past versions of NFPA 25. That means individual states would have to adopt the latest version for the recall regulations to apply.
Massachusetts, for example, is currently using the 2021 addition of NFPA 25.
Hetzler is also attacking the issue at the local level by submitting a proposed local code change to the state Board of Fire Prevention Regulations, which also operates on a three-year cycle. Bacon, however, urged Gov. Maura Healey to lean heavily on the board to expedite the change.
Jake Wark, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services, said the agency supports Fall River’s efforts.
The proposed additions to both local and national standards “would ensure that recalled sprinkler heads are identified and replaced rapidly, reliably and consistently,” Wark said.
Since the Gabriel House fire, many Massachusetts fire departments have taken steps to identify recalled sprinklers in their cities and towns, Wark said. The fire services department provided extensive guidance on the issue in the aftermath of the tragedy.
“We share Chief Bacon’s concern that other recalled sprinkler heads are still in service, potentially placing lives at risk,” Wark said. “We believe the proposed framework would be effective and manageable for the fire service, property owners and sprinkler contractors.”
The recalled sprinkler heads in question
The sprinkler heads in question, manufactured by the Central Sprinkler Company, were subject to nationwide recalls in the late 1990s and early 2000s because of their “O-ring seals,” a component that can corrode and prevent the sprinkler heads from activating in the event of a fire.
Approximately 35-40 million of them, manufactured between the mid-1970s and 2001, were recalled.
The manufacturer offered to replace the heads for free for a limited time. The replacement program ceased in August 2007.
Hetzler said there could still be millions of recalled sprinkler heads installed in buildings across the country.
After the Gabriel House fire, Bacon announced that his department had discovered the heads inside four additional residential buildings in Fall River — one group home, two boarding houses and one shelter.
Each of the property owners said they had no prior knowledge of the recall, but they “acted swiftly once notified.” The sprinkler heads were replaced within a two-week deadline, while temporary fire watches were maintained at the buildings until the work was completed.
Hetzler said recalled sprinkler heads were also discovered in nearby New Bedford.
A survivor’s perspective
Former Gabriel House resident Mike Pimentel lived on the building’s second floor when the fire struck. A double amputee who uses a motorized wheelchair, he had to be pulled from his window by firefighters and carried down a ladder to safety.
Pimentel, who is in his 70s and resided there for eight years, is one of many former residents with an active lawsuit.
Today, he resides in a studio apartment at the Cardinal Medeiros Towers in Fall River, where nurses and home care workers visit him throughout the day.
“I’m doing really good,” he said in a recent interview.
But it took him a while to get there.
“I was kind of messed up after the fire,” he said. “The survivor’s guilt is getting a lot better.”
Pimentel was looking forward to a memorial event scheduled for Monday in front of the burned-out Gabriel House building. He would be reunited with some friends, perhaps give a speech and then release doves into the sky.
“I don’t want to remember how these people died, I want to remember how they lived because we were a family,” Pimentel said. “It had its problems … but it is what it is. You can’t go back and change it, so you just gotta move forward."
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