A former employee said she never saw the staff perform fire drills. The local fire chief pushed back at claims that dispatching more firefighters would’ve saved more lives.

Elderly residents – some in wheelchairs and some dependent on oxygen tanks – were blinded by deadly smoke as they tried to escape an assisted-living facility in Fall River, Massachusetts, which caught fire Sunday evening.

Nine people were killed and one was critically injured in an assisted living home fire in Fall River, Massachusetts, authorities said. Fall River Fire Chief Jeffrey Bacon called the fire at Gabriel House "an unfathomable tragedy.

You could have had 100 firefighters show up on that scene and it wouldn’t have been enough,” Jeffrey Bacon said at a news briefing outside the fire department’s headquarters Tuesday.

A fire at Gabriel House assisted living in Fall River, Massachusetts, resulted in multiple deaths and injuries. City is responding and investigating.

The state Executive Office of Elder Affairs cited the facility for seven deficiencies, four of which were repeat problems.

The Gabriel House assisted living facility did not perform fire drills or train workers in evacuation procedures and was also understaffed and poorly maintained, according to a current and former employee interviewed in the aftermath of the fatal fire there that killed nine residents.

The names of seven of the nine people who died in the Fall River fire on July 13 have been released to the public.

A Massachusetts assisted-living center where nine residents died in a fire was cited for failing to immediately report more than two dozen health and safety incidents, according to

The investigation into the fire’s cause is ongoing but “does not appear to be suspicious,” according to the Bristol County district attorney's office.