FALL RIVER, Mass. — A court filing contends that the Gabriel House was warned that the assisted living facility’s sprinklers were recalled well before the deadly fire that claimed 10 lives, Boston 25 News learned Monday.
The company hired by the Gabriel House to inspect the sprinkler system, Fire Systems Inc., wrote to the Fall River assisted living facility 10 months before the deadly July 2025 fire and told the building owners that the sprinklers were recalled.
According to the filed complaint, Fire Systems Inc. informed Tom Bettencourt at the Gabriel House that the heads of their sprinkler unit were recalled around 2001.
Fire Systems Inc. alleges they informed the Gabriel House that all the defective sprinklers should be replaced but the living facility never responded.
FSI also offered to do a complimentary survey and give the living facility a quote to replace the units, court documents claim.
The Gabriel House contained sprinklers that were part of a nationwide recall 24 years ago. Those recalled units, made by Central Sprinkler Company, were designed with O-ring seals that could corrode over time.
In a statement, Gabriel House owner Dennis Etzkorn told Boston 25 News that he intends to file a cross claim against Fire Systems Inc, alleging that FSI “failed for years” to properly inspect the facility and test the building’s sprinklers.
The Gabriel House also claims that the one singular email sent in September 2024 was the sole instance of FSI communicating any issue with the sprinkler system and that inspections in February, April and July of 2025 found no significant damage to the sprinklers.
“FSI’s failures not only amount to breaches of its contract with Gabriel Care, recklessness, negligence, misrepresentations, and fraud, but also were a direct cause of the deaths of ten Gabriel House residents,” Gabriel House spokesperson George Regan said in a statement.
25 Investigates learned that identifying recalled parts is not a required item during routine sprinkler inspections — and that responsibility for maintaining the system falls to the property owner, manufacturer, or installer. And, these inspections, which are limited in scope, do not constitute a certification of system performance.
Since 2014, FSI has conducted periodic inspection and testing of the Gabriel House fire alarm and sprinkler system in accordance with its service agreement.
The 100-unit assisted-living facility opened in 1999.
64-year-old Rui Albernaz, 61-year-old Ronald Codega, 66-year-old Brenda Cropper, 69-year-old Margaret Duddy, 78-year-old Robert King, 71-year-old Kim Mackin, 78-year-old Richard Rochon,77-year-old Joseph Wilansky, 70-year-old Halina Lawler and 86-year-old Eleanor Willett lost their lives in the fire.
After the deadly fire, the same recalled sprinklers were found in six other buildings in Fall River.
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