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.

Gabriel House had seen better days. The 100-unit assisted-living facility that burned Sunday night, killing nine people so far, opened in 1999.

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.

The Massachusetts assisted-living facility that caught fire Sunday evening was slated to undergo a recertification and compliance review process later this year.

Flames roared through an assisted-living residence in Massachusetts, killing nine people, injuring 30 others and trapping residents inside.

Nine people died Sunday night after an assisted living facility caught fire in Fall River, Massachusetts, officials said, with elderly people begging for help from first responders as smoke poured out of the building.

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.

Top Massachusetts officials are suggesting the state consider new ways to regulate and finance so-called affordable assisted living homes after the deadly fire Sunday night at the facility for seniors in Fall River that relies heavily on public funding.

Following a deadly fire at the Gabriel House assisted living home in Fall River, a state lawmaker is pushing for hearings to examine the incident and the regulatory requirements for assisted living centers in Massachusetts.