32 presumed dead in seniors’ home fire

Emergency workers digging through the remains of the senior residence Residence du Havre in L’Isle Verte, Quebec, yesterday.AFP/L’isle-Verte, QuebecThirty-two people are presumed to have died in the fire that swept through a retirement residence in the Canadian province of Quebec on Thursday, police said yesterday. Eight bodies have been recovered.The grim reality set in after careful investigation of who was missing and who may have been out of town, and as security officials worked to melt layers of ice up to two feet thick that encased many of the bodies.“I think we can all agree here today, that the 24 people that are still missing - I think we can assume the worst, but you have to understand that we’re not going to confirm any deaths until we’ve actually recovered the remains,” police spokesman Guy Lapointe said.He was addressing a televised news conference in L’Isle-Verte, the tiny town northeast of Quebec City that has been devastated by the tragedy.Teams of firefighters, police and coroner’s officials had to use steam machines to melt the ice, caused by the water that was used to put out the flames.“You can imagine how difficult it is to go through the ice, melt it, and again, do it in a way that preserves the integrity of potential victims,” Lapointe said.“So it’s very difficult work again today. It’s very cold. So we’re doing our best really to go as fast as possible. Every effort is being deployed. It’s just very difficult,” he said.In the aftermath of the disaster, attention has focused on the fact that only part of the residence was equipped with sprinklers, and that provincial law did not require a sprinkler system there.Lapointe declined to comment on media reports that the fire may have been caused by a cigarette in a resident’s room.The police are looking into a report that a night guard at the home saw thick smoke coming from a second-floor room.“Our position right now is that’s one hypothesis. There are many that are still on the table. This one is not being privileged at this time, in the sense that it’s the same level as the other ones,” Lapointe said.“We’re still interviewing people, and we can’t just go on one or two facts to state the cause of something of this magnitude.”He also urged residents not to talk to the media, in order to help maintain the integrity of the police investigation.“Sadly, when people go forward and talk to the media – and I’m not saying it’s your fault, not at all - but obviously rumors will start and people come to conclusions, and for us it’s very important that we do the job thoroughly and come to the right conclusion at the end,” he told reporters.The co-owners of the residence, in a statement, offered their deepest sympathy to the victims and said they would co-operate fully with authorities.CARP, an association representing the elderly in Canada, has long demanded that all such facilities install sprinklers, but said cost concerns have overridden safety needs.“We’ve had these kinds of fires over the last three decades, inquest after inquest making these recommendations. Here we are today and we still don’t have ... a national standard that’s enforced and fully funded,” said CARP spokeswoman Susan Eng.An investigation by La Presse newspaper published on Friday found that 1,052 of 1,953 private seniors’ residences in Quebec have no sprinklers at all, and 204 of them, including the L’Isle-Verte home, had only partial sprinkler systems.“It’s clear that the best way to protect our seniors in these residences is to have sprinklers,” said Andre St-Hilaire of the Quebec Association of Fire Chiefs.    Canada has a patchwork of regulations for homes for the elderly that can vary from province to province. Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, made sprinklers mandatory at the beginning of the year in all homes for seniors, allowing aphase-in period for existing homes.Ontario acted after four people died in 2009 fire at a seniors’ home in the town of Orillia. A coroner’s inquest urged the provincial government to require such residences to install sprinklers.The United States now requires all long-term care facilities to have sprinkler systems if they serve Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.