Twenty-four people were injured overnight in a fire at a nursing home in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox city near Tel Aviv, emergency services said Thursday. About 40 residents were evacuated from the eight-story building.
Two men, ages 65 and about 80, were seriously injured with second-degree burns, according to the Magen David Adom emergency medical service. Both were sedated and placed on ventilators before being taken to hospitals.
Four other people were moderately injured: a 75-year-old woman, two men ages about 50 and 80 and a 73-year-old woman. Another 18 people sustained minor injuries, including from smoke inhalation.
The injured were taken to Sheba Medical Center, Rabin Medical Center, Sourasky Medical Center and Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center.
“This was a very difficult scene,” Magen David Adom paramedics Yissachar Weiss and Tal Sagi and emergency medical technician Yaakov Schechter said in a joint statement.
They said MDA deployed large numbers of emergency personnel, including rapid-response vehicles, ambulances and mobile intensive care units.
“We provided medical treatment to a large number of injured people, including two men in serious and unstable condition who were sedated and ventilated with burns to their upper bodies, four people in moderate condition and 18 in mild condition, and evacuated them to hospitals,” they said.
The scene of the fire at the nursing home in Bnei Brak
(Photo: Fire and Rescue Services)
Fire and Rescue Services said the blaze broke out in an apartment on the first floor of the Mishkenot Vatikim nursing center on Amram Gaon Street in Bnei Brak.
Fire and rescue crews from Bnei Brak and neighboring Ramat Gan were dispatched to the scene, where they worked to extinguish the blaze and searched the building for people who might be trapped.
Firefighters found several residents trapped inside the burning apartment and rescued them before turning them over to medical teams, according to Fire and Rescue Services. Dozens of other residents were evacuated from the building as the operation continued.
After extinguishing the main fire, crews continued searching the building to ensure no one else remained trapped.
A fire investigator was called to the scene to determine what caused the blaze.