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When a fire breaks out, everyone knows who to call. When a building may be at risk of violating fire safety code, the solution is less obvious.
Whaler’s Cove, the city’s lone assisted living facility, has gone without a formal fire safety inspection for nearly two decades, The Light has found.
That’s because the New Bedford Fire Department and the state’s Executive Office of Aging and Independence (AGE) each claim the other is responsible for enforcing fire codes in assisted-living facilities.
The Light inquired about fire safety at Whaler’s Cove in the wake of a deadly assisted living facility fire in Fall River in July, which killed 10 people and injured at least 30 more.
In an interview with The New Bedford Light in August, both the newly appointed New Bedford Fire Chief Brian Medeiros and Deputy Fire Chief Daniel Coons said that the Fire Department has never inspected Whaler’s Cove, because assisted-living facilities are regulated by the state.
In an email to The Light, a city spokesperson doubled down on the assertion, pointing to a Massachusetts state law that grants AGE, a division of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS), the authority to regulate assisted living facilities, including any fire safety inspections.
However, a spokesperson from AGE said in an email to The Light that AGE does not perform any fire safety inspections itself, instead deferring to local fire departments. A spokesperson with the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services also stated the responsibility of fire code enforcement always falls on the municipality.
New Bedford seems alone in its confusion. Officials at the Fall River, Mattapoisett, Taunton and Fairhaven fire departments each told The Light that they inspect their assisted living facilities on an annual or in some cases quarterly basis.
In a phone call with The Light, Whaler’s Cove executive director Laura Sousa confirmed that in her 18 years at the facility, the New Bedford Fire Department has never performed a formal fire code safety inspection.
In the wake of the deadly Gabriel House fire in Fall River in July, however, Sousa said she met with Chief Medeiros to discuss emergency response, and invited the Fire Department to conduct an informal walkthrough and collaborate on emergency pre-planning this October. Officers also interact regularly with facility personnel while responding to emergency calls, Sousa added.
“They’re here all the time,” Sousa said. “We have a good relationship with them. They’re not strangers.”
A gap in inspection rules?
Although Whaler’s Cove has not received a local fire code inspection in recent memory, that has never landed Whaler’s Cove in hot water with the state. The most recent biannual inspection report from the AGE, conducted last October, did not flag any issues related to fire safety.
That’s because the AGE does not require that assisted living facilities submit documentation of local fire code inspections — only citations resulting from said inspections. If AGE finds that a facility failed to report any citations within seven days of receiving them, corrective action could include limiting the facility’s ability to accept new residents, placing conditions on the certification, or in some cases, suspension or loss of certification.
In response to questions from The Light, however, a spokesperson for the AGE did not directly answer how the office would find out if a facility did not receive any local inspections and therefore had no citations to submit.
According to Sousa, Whaler’s Cove regularly sends AGE its documentation of emergency preparedness plans, sprinkler testing reports, and other proof of safety inspections conducted by a contractor or by facility personnel.
Whaler’s Cove also must submit proof of regular sprinkler system inspections to the local Fire Department — a practice that Chief Medeiros said New Bedford does enforce. But fire departments do not typically perform these inspections themselves.
Instead, sprinkler system inspections are most often performed by the sprinkler system provider itself. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) provides training and recommendations as to how and how often these inspections should be conducted, but it’s largely up to the building owner to ensure compliance.
And while the NFPA requires some level of inspection at least monthly, building owners are only required to run a full test of their sprinkler systems once every five to 75 years, depending on the sprinkler type and environment.
The July 13 fire at the Gabriel House assisted living facility in Fall River was the deadliest fire in Massachusetts in 40 years. The building’s sprinkler and fire alarm system malfunctioned even though they had passed an inspection from Dartmouth-based Fire Systems, Inc. just five days prior.
Whaler’s Cove does not use Fire Systems, Inc. for any of its sprinkler or fire alarm systems, Sousa said.
Nursing home inspections reveal minor fire issues
Assisted living facilities aren’t the only types of residences with fire safety concerns — three of New Bedford’s six nursing homes have each received numerous citations related to fire safety in the past year.
But unlike assisted living facilities, nursing homes, which offer a higher level of medical care, are regulated by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the federal government through Medicaid. Nursing homes’ fire safety reports are made public through an online portal on the Medicaid website.
Since June 2024, nursing homes Brandon Woods, Hathaway Manor Extended Care, and CareOne at New Bedford each received multiple fire safety citations from the MassDPH.
Hathaway Manor received 12 citations this January related to emergency preparedness, backup power sources, safe means of egress, and sprinkler system maintenance. In December 2024, Brandon Woods received nine citations mostly related to emergency preparedness, including one order to install a sprinkler system at the 135-bed facility. CareOne at New Bedford also received nine fire safety citations in June 2024, mostly related to the building’s electrical and power systems.
Nothing in the reports indicated any serious threat, however. In each instance, MassDPH marked the homes’ deficiencies as posing minimal to moderate threat and included the date that each issue was corrected.
Opening doors
Mayor Jon Mitchell appointed both Chief Medeiros and Deputy Chief Coons to their roles in July. Confusion around assisted living facilities notwithstanding, both officers said their goal is to be more proactive with emergency preparedness.
When fire officers visit Whaler’s Cove this October, Coons said, they will advise on the facility’s pre-planning and map out the property and any potential hazards in a new online system.
“[These are] things that would make our life easier if we have to respond to these properties, as well as better for the residents in the event of an emergency,” Coons said.
In the wake of a deadly rooming house fire in New Bedford in 2023, the fire department added an inspector tasked with identifying and monitoring “high-risk” residences, which largely include any residences housing four families or more. The new approach, coupled with stricter building code enforcement overall, has led to a 25% decrease in structural fires in New Bedford, Mitchell told Bloomberg Cities Network last year.
To build on this progress, Chief Medeiros said the department is working on a filing system to better track and monitor these high-risk properties. Some high-use buildings such as schools receive quarterly inspections, Medeiros added.
But with 4,266 properties on the high-risk list and the high-risk inspector performing 773 inspections in 2024, it would take one inspector over five years to visit every listed high-risk property — leaving the vast majority of residences, not just facilities for seniors, overlooked.
“There’s a lot of property in the city, and we have one inspector doing the high-risk inspections,” Chief Medeiros said. “Manpower is tough.”
Email Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org.
When politicians are elected they take an oath of office to serve and protect the city and it’s residents. 18 Years without a fire inspection ? ? ? How many more reasons do we need to realize that new leadership is needed in City Hall ? ? ? We need a mayor that cares about the residents of New Bedford and has the common sense to call the Fire Chief in and direct him to inspect all these facilities so a disaster like the one that just happened in Fall River can be prevented). Again New Bedford needs new leadership in City Hall.
Sounds like a priorities, budget allocation and staffing problem.
No there are no reasonable excuses, this is nothing more than failed leadership and a lack of common sense. You do not turn a blind eye to inspecting buildings, keeping residents, and neighborhoods safe. There is no way that a conflict between the state’s Executive Office of Aging and Independence and the Fire Department should have been allowed to go on for 18 years without one of our elected or appointed leaders to have the common sense and leadership to step in.
Terrific reporting by Ms. Kushwaha. Congratulations to the Light. Stay on the story until this problem is fixed.
Excuse me Frank, the Light has stories from December the need to update us on. Get in line!
We are all going to get old. Many of us will go to assisted living and/or nursing home. We should all insist that safety, especially for the elderly that can’t help themselves are well taken care of for safety. After all the burden that is on the employees is overwhelming on a daily basis, never mind in an emergency situation. They should be assured safety is one thing they don’t have to worry about.
Scheduling of inspections should rely solely on the business. Just as a homeowner we are required to get our boilers cleaned and chimneys swept. It’s not up the the fire department to remind us, it is our responsibility. The fire department will inspect when a permit is issued. Thank you New Bedford firefighters, EMT’s and police.