Fire At Rhode Island Rehabilitation Facility Sends 24 Patients To Hospital

A fire at a rehabilitation facility in Rhode Island sent at least 24 patients to the hospital and displaced 40 people.

The fire started in a room on the third floor of Genesis Respiratory and Rehabilitation Center on Woodland Drive in Coventry around 9 p.m. Thursday; the flames had set the sprinklers and alarm off. The Coventry Fire Department said that the sprinklers extinguished the fire and saved the patients' lives. But, it created excessive smoke that spread throughout the building, WLNE reported.

"Sprinkler system definitely saved lives tonight," the fire chief Frank Brown told NBC 10. The chief praised a facility nurse for her quick rescue efforts that saved several people.

The rehab houses 150 people, and around 40 residents were relocated to another facility due to water damage caused by the sprinkler system. Twenty-five ambulances from Providence, East Greenwich, Central Falls and South Kingstown responded to the scene to assist Coventry Fire officials. According to NBC 10, 24 people were taken to local hospitals for evaluation.

Responding emergency units set up a reunification area near the facility where residents and their family members could reunite or gather information.

The rehabilitation facility at Rhode Island is owned by Genesis Healthcare and provided patients access to respiratory therapists, ventilators and piped-in oxygen. "The Center is only one in the entire state of Rhode Island that provides access to Respiratory Therapists 24 hours a day," the facility claimed on its website.

The State Fire Marshals are currently investigating the cause of the fire.

In January, a fire at a public housing building in Philadelphia killed 12 people, including eight children. As the fire burned, eight people were able to escape the blaze and some were taken to nearby hospitals. It took firefighters around 50 minutes to control the blaze, USA Today reported.

A week later, a deadly blaze at a residential complex in the Bronx killed 17 people and injured 44. The New York Fire Department believes a space heater running at a lower unit of the building caused the fire. It is considered one of the deadliest blazes in recent history.