Six dead and 81 injured in a fire in a nursing home in Milan

Six elderly people died, and 81 people were poisoned or injuredtwo of them seriously, in a fire that broke out this morning in a nursing home in Milan, the Fire Service reported, reports Efe.

The fire broke out in one of the rooms, around 01:20 am local time, in which The two women who occupied it, aged 69 and 87, died charred to deathwhile the other four victims are three women aged 75, 84 and 85 and a 73-year-old man, who died of smoke inhalation which affected the first floor of the building.

Of the 81 injured, who were admitted to the hospital due to poisoning or injuries, two are in serious condition, according to Efe.

There were 167 people in the nursing home “Casa dei Coniugi” at the time of the fire, and the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, who went to the scene of the fire early in the morning, explained that due to his health condition residents had to be removed “one by one”.

“It could have been worse, but six deaths is still a very high toll and we hope that the two hospitalized people who are in a delicate situation will not add up,” said Sala.

The service personnel sounded the alarm and this made it possible to contain the flames, as only one room was affected, but the problem was the smoke that quickly spread throughout the house.

All the people who were hospitalized had more or less pronounced symptoms of smoke inhalation, but no patient suffered burns, reports Efe.

Two patients were hospitalized under the red code, the most severe, while the rest had milder symptoms.

As for the cause, “the main hypothesis is an accidental fire, but everything has yet to be determined,” firefighters explained to the media.

The residence is located in a popular district in the southeast of Milan, It is owned by the City and it is managed by the Proges cooperative, which controls 300 centers of this type in 11 regions and receives elderly people with various degrees of dependence who do not need hospital services.