Six residents of a nursing home have died and more than 80 have been hospitalized after a fire broke out at the facility on Thursday night in Milan, northern Italy.
The fire broke out just before 1:20 a.m. (local time) in this care home, home to 167 elderly people, in a working-class neighborhood in the center of the Lombard capital.
Photo: AFP
“Six people died and many others were hospitalized (from the fumes) drunk. “Firefighters rescued dozens of other residents,” the firefighters said on Twitter. According to the Milan daily Il Corriere della Sera, the six dead victims are between 69 and 87 years old.
“It was a really complicated moment given the smoke and the difficulty of getting around for the elderly,” Milan fire chief Nicola Micele told the Local Team channel.
Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala was there in the morning. “The fire would have started from a room where two occupants died of charring,” he explained.
The other deceased victims, a man and three women, are said to have succumbed to inhaling toxic fumes.
Photo: AFP
A Milan Fire Brigade official, Carlo Cardinali, told AFP that 81 people were hospitalized, including two in serious condition.
An investigation into the causes of the fire is ongoing and “the most likely hypothesis is that of a short circuit,” national firefighter Luca Cari told AFP.
“In the wheelchair”
In a tweet, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed “all of her solidarity with those involved in the fire,” expressed her “sincere condolences” to the victims’ families and wished “the injured a speedy recovery.” For his part, the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, sent a message to the Mayor of Milan to express his “solidarity with the injured and the rescuers”.
170 residents were evacuated by the rescuers, who took them out and carried them “one by one in their arms”, explained the mayor of Milan, whose services are looking for solutions to accommodate them, in particular in other nursing homes.
“We saw the elders covering their faces with wet rags, then they were evacuated, some in wheelchairs, others in walkers,” said a local resident, Lucia, who was woken up by the sirens that night, quoted by Ansa agency.
The three-storey building from 1920 is a municipal building that “has been managed by a private service provider for years,” emphasized the mayor.
Elderly people with different needs for care live here, but they do not require hospital care.
The private operator Proges is a cooperative that employs 3,500 people in 300 companies in Italy.
According to Il Corriere della Sera, this nursing home in Milan suffered heavy losses with 53 dead during the first wave of the Covid pandemic in spring 2020.