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Cigarette to blame for nursing home fire  

BOISE - Fire investigators said Sunday that an unattended cigarette is to blame for a second alarm fire at a local nursing home.

Investigators believe the cigarette belonged to a person visiting the home.

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Nursing home cited, fined for patients' smoking 

The state has placed a nursing home in Larimer on a provisional license and slapped it with a $22,000 fine, accusing it of permitting unsafe smoking by patients around oxygen equipment.

The 134-bed Forbes Road Nursing and Rehabilitation Center is appealing the penalties, disputing an account by state inspectors that smoking they saw outside the building on May 20-21 posed an unusual risk.

The Department of Health imposed an "immediate jeopardy" citation on the facility May 21. The designation prevented any new admissions until two days later, when officials were satisfied that procedures were in place to ensure no smoking would take place in the presence of flammable oxygen equipment.

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• Fatal Niles nursing home fire linked to smoking materials in closet, officials say  

Smoking materials smoldering in a bedroom closet may have sparked a fire in a Niles nursing home that killed two residents and injured two others, officials said Thursday. . . .

A 53-year-old man who shared the room was in a smoking lounge on the main floor of the nursing home, Davis said.

Although Borkowski said the cause of the fire has yet to determined, Davis said investigators were looking at the possibility that careless use of smoking materials was to blame. . . .

Many nursing home facilities are becoming smoke-free or creating smoking lounges because of safety issues, said Kathy Swanson, a supervisory ombudsman for the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, which covers nursing homes in suburban Cook County, including Hampton Plaza.

"A lot of facilities will take control of smoking materials so if you want to smoke, you come to the nurse's station, you get your cigarette and now that we see you have your cigarette we can watch that you make it down to the smoking room," Swanson said.

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Cigarette Causes Deadly Nursing Home Fire in Green Cove Springs 

he Fire Marshal's office says careless smoking started a fire in a nursing home. The Fire Marshal tells First Coast News the victim was smoking next to an oxygen tank while in bed and the bed caught fire.

"What we have is a case of careless smoking. This is our preliminary findings. We've eliminated other causes. We have identified some paraphernalia related to smoking", says Lieutenant Robby Stephens with State Fire Marshall's Office.

It happened at the Governor's Creek Health and Rehab center.

We're told the man who died was in his sixties. Authorities have not yet released any more information on the victim.

Nine people were hurt in the fire.

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Death In Nursing Home Fire Blamed On Careless Smoking  

GREEN COVE SPRINGS, Fla. -- A man in his 60s died Saturday afternoon and at least eight others were injured after the victim's bed in a Green Cove Springs nursing home caught fire. Fire investigators believe the man was smoking in bed.

The fire broke out about 4:40 p.m. in the east wing of the Governor's Creek Health and Rehabilitation Center on Oak Street.

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Cigarette likely sparked fire at nursing home  

A cigarette likely sparked the fire that caused the evacuation of the Bridgewater Nursing Home on Saturday, according to Director Larry LeBlanc.

“When I got here it was like in the movies. There were a lot of firemen and emergency medical equipment,” said LeBlanc. “There was a smoldering fire outside of the building next door to a shed, but the smoke penetrated into a small area of the basement through an old stone (foundation) … We can thank our lucky stars that no patients were affected by the smoke or the fire.”

LeBlanc did not say if the smoker was identified or penalized.

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Nursing home resident dies after starting fire 

A nursing home resident died this morning after he accidentally started a fire that caused third-degree burns to 75 percent of his body, authorities said.

Rowlan Clayton, 66, who lived in the Ambassador Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, at 4900 N. Bernard St., was pronounced dead at 11:45 a.m. at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

About 5:30 a.m., Clayton was sitting in a chair on a patio outside the nursing home when he sparked the fire, which spread to his clothes, authorities said.

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10 Die in Nursing Home Fire in Russia 

Fire swept through a nursing home early Thursday in Siberia, killing at least 10 people in the latest in a series of deadly blazes - many caused by neglect of safety rules. . . .

He said the fire began in the upper floor of the three-story nursing home and had apparently been caused by the violation of fire safety rules by patients, many of whom were drunk after a party.

Alexander Glazunov, a regional emergency official, suggested in televised comments that the fire may have started in a common area where people were watching TV and smoking the night before.

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• Cigarette blamed in death of 10 at Siberian nursing home (Roundup)  

An unextinguished cigarette caused a fire that claimed the lives of 10 people at a nursing home near the Russian city of Omsk, emergency officials said Thursday.

'An unextinguished cigarette was the cause of the fire,' Alexander Glazunov, a regional Emergency Situations Ministry official, told the local television station Channel 12, Interfax reported.

The fire killed 10 late Wednesday and left four hospitalized, the latest in a string of tragic fires at Russian nursing homes and other healthcare wards in the last year.

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1 death, 21 injured reported in Davie nursing home fire 

Investigators began picking through the ruins Tuesday of a nursing home south of Winston-Salem where one resident died in a fire and 21 others, including two police officers, were injured.

The victim of the late Monday fire at Davie Place Residential Care was identified as George Minor of Mocksville, said assistant Davie County manager Beth Dirks said Tuesday morning.

Dirks said that four residents remain in critical condition at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center

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Fire spurs look at nursing-home rules 

Three years before last week's fatal fire in a Mocksville adult-care home, state regulators warned owners of such homes about the dangers of residents smoking in their rooms.

In a four-page memo to residential-care providers, the regulators noted that one person had already been killed and several others injured in fires caused by smoking. The memo laid out the state's regulations, which allow smoking in designated areas of adult-care homes and nursing homes but not in residents' rooms.

"The purpose of this memorandum is to alert and remind facilities of the need to provide adequate protections for residents who smoke," said the June 28, 2004, memo from the N.C. Division of Facility Services, which oversees adult-care homes.

The memo went on to warn owners of adult-care and nursing homes to take special precautions with residents who use an oxygen tank and smoke.

The fire Monday night at Davie Place Residential Care began with a resident using an oxygen tank and smoking in her room. George Minor, 58, died in the fire and 21 others were injured.

That fire has brought a new level of scrutiny to how the state and individual adult-care homes deal with residents who want to smoke.

Advocates and residential-care providers said last week that the state's existing rules on smoking are difficult to enforce and may need to be tightened.

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Investigators: Resident smoking near oxygen tanks caused NC nursing home blaze 

A resident who was smoking near oxygen tanks on a side porch triggered three explosions and a fire at an adult care home that killed one person and injured 20 others, investigators said Wednesday.

Local, state and federal investigators released their findings after analyzing the source of Monday's fire.

Two residents of David Place Residential Care remained in critical condition Wednesday at a hospital in Winston-Salem, authorities said. One of the injured was upgraded to serious condition and another to good condition.

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Nursing home fire from 50 years ago remembered  

The fire on Feb. 17, 1957, killed 72 patients. Yet the cause of the blaze considered the worst ever at a nursing home in the U.S. remains a mystery. Some blamed arson. Others blamed outdated electrical equipment, or a resident's smoking.

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Nursing home fined $100,000 in death 

An Escondido nursing home yesterday received the state's most serious citation and a $100,000 fine after a resident receiving oxygen was left alone while smoking a cigarette. He caught fire and burned to death.

It is the fourth state accusation in three years against the 98-bed facility, now named Palomar Heights Care Center.

A state health official said the man's death Jan. 11 is the second attributed to mismanagement by a California nursing home in at least a year.

"Even though the resident was advised he shouldn't be smoking while his oxygen was turned on, he wasn't wearing a flame-retardant apron as required and the attendant left him alone," said Anna Ramirez of the state Division of Licensing and Certification's coastal region, which includes San Diego County.

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Escondido nursing home slapped with $100,000 fine after smoking death - North County Times 

The state health department has slapped an Escondido nursing home with a $100,000 fine and a citation, officials announced Wednesday, weeks after a 66-year-old resident caught fire and died while hooked up to an oxygen tank and smoking outside the facility.

The California Department of Health's investigation into the Jan. 11 incident found Palomar Heights Care Center was responsible for the man's death, department spokeswoman Norma Arceo said. . . .

According to the written findings of state health investigators, the man caught fire and burned for six minutes before a worker noticed the flames. He appeared to be conscious at one point during the fire, and suffered extensive burns to his face, torso, arms and legs, the report states.

A nursing care facility worker told state investigators that he took the man outside for a smoke, and told him he'd be back to get him in 15 minutes. . . .

The investigation report states that the man, a smoker who suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, was known by the nursing home to be "at risk for burning himself and others,"

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