Two Fatality Board and Care Facility Fire Salvation Army Rehabilitation Center - (Miami, Florida - November 11, 1995) » The Fire

November 12 was a Sunday night. At 11 p.m. most of the residents were already in bed. “Lights out” in the Center was 10 p.m. - only the bathroom, hallway and TV room lights remained lit. Some residents were reading or watching television in the lounge areas; a few were standing in the hallway conversing as a group.

At approximately 10:30 p.m., a resident was ironing in the living room of a dormitory suite on the second floor. The door to the hallway was propped open. The resident noticed a glow from around the corner, in addition to some smoke. Going into the hallway to investigate, he turned the corner and saw flames in the office waiting area. He turned back and shouted a warning, then ran down the SE stairway and placed a call to 911 from the pay phone in the front hallway on the first floor.

Meanwhile, other residents on the second and third floors had noted the accumulating smoke, and were running from door to door, banging on doors and attempting to alert others of the fire. A few residents exited through the NE and SE stairways before the corridors became untenable. As heavy black smoke accumulated on the third floor, occupants were forced back into their rooms and started to break out windows.

One resident moved through the smoke from his room to the SE stairway, where a metal coat rack holding work shirts was located next to the stairway door. Touching the coat rack with his hand as he felt across the wall for the exit, he burned his hand on the coat rack. He managed to crawl back up the hall and reenter a room, where he was later rescued through the window.

Some of the men made their way down the NE stairway, and others used the SE stairway, exiting through choking smoke. A small group of men familiar with the seldom used NW stairway exited into the rear parking lot, without encountering smoke in the stairway.

Several of the residents exited on the second floor and congregated on the elevated open air patio located on the west side of the building. There was no direct exit from this area to the ground level. Some of the men dropped from the patio to the roof of the single story Salvation Army retail shop, then climbed down on a step ladder that was propped against the building by other occupants who had successfully exited via the stairways.

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