Six elderly people died and 81 people were poisoned or injured, two of them seriously, in the fire that broke out in a nursing home in Milan.
The fire started in one of the rooms at dawn and in which the two women who occupied it, aged 69 and 87, died charred, while the other four victims are three women aged 75, 84 and 85 and a man of 73, who died from smoke poisoning that affected the first floor of the structure.
Of the 81 injured, who have been admitted to the hospital due to poisoning or injuries, two of them are in serious condition.
In the “Casa dei Coniugi” nursing home there were 167 people at the time of the fire and the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, who went to the place early in the morning explained that due to the health conditions of the residents they had to be taken out “one by one”.
“It could have been worse, but six deaths is still a very high balance and we hope that the two hospitalized people who are in a delicate situation will not add up,” said Sala.
The alarm was given by service personnel and this allowed the flames to be contained, since only one room was affected, but the problem was the smoke that quickly spread throughout the residence.
All the people hospitalized had more or less severe symptoms of smoke inhalation, but no patient suffered burns.
Two patients were hospitalized in code red, the most serious, while the rest with milder symptoms.
Regarding the causes, “the main hypothesis is that of an accidental fire but everything remains to be established,” the firefighters explained to the media.
The residence is located in a popular neighborhood in the southeast of Milan, it is owned by the City Council and is managed by the Proges cooperative, which controls 300 centers of this type in 11 regions and welcomes the elderly with various levels of dependency, who do not need hospital services.
