Bnei Brak nursing home fire injures at least 24, two seriously

Update, 1 October, 10:08 Israel time

The fire at the Bnei Brak building was started by an elderly resident who lit a cigarette near an oxygen tank, according to an alert from Ynet. The short alert calls the site a nursing home. It does not say which body determined the cause, and it gives no further details.

The Jerusalem Post reported that at least 24 people were hurt. It said two of them were in serious condition, which it described as unstable. Earlier reports had given two people seriously injured and about 20 others treated for light injuries. The Post also called the building a nursing home. That matches N12's later wording, but not the original Magen David Adom statement, which referred to a residential building.

The Post's report included a photograph credited to the Magen David Adom spokesperson. It shows first responders moving one of the injured from the scene.

The new reports still do not identify the injured. They do not say which hospitals treated them or how many were taken there. They also do not say how much damage the building suffered. Magen David Adom has not published an updated casualty figure in the material available.

The story as first reported

Two people were seriously injured in a fire in a building on Rav Amram Gaon Street in Bnei Brak, according to Magen David Adom, Israel's national emergency medical service. The service said its Dan region dispatch centre received a call about the blaze at 00:46, and that its medics and paramedics were treating several people with injuries of varying severity, two of them serious.

Later updates from the Israeli broadcaster N12 said the fire had started in one apartment on the first floor of an eight-storey building. N12 reported that about 20 residents were being examined and treated at the scene, with their condition described as light, in addition to the two people in serious condition.

Residential building or nursing home

The reports differ on what kind of building caught fire. Magen David Adom's statement described it as a residential building, and the first N12 and Ynet alerts used the same description. Ynet's alert said two people had been seriously hurt in a fire in a residential building in Bnei Brak.

About a quarter of an hour after its first alert, N12 edited its report and began describing the site as a nursing home. In Hebrew the term used is beit avot, which translates roughly as an old age home or home for the elderly. The revised N12 item kept the rest of the account unchanged, attributing the casualty figures to Magen David Adom. The material available does not explain the change in description, and Magen David Adom's own statement, as published, does not mention a nursing home.

One N12 update carried a photograph credited to the spokesperson's office of the Israel Fire and Rescue Services, the national firefighting authority. The N12 items giving the floor where the fire began and the figure of about 20 lightly injured residents do not state explicitly which body supplied those details.

Who responded

Magen David Adom, often shortened to MDA, is Israel's national ambulance and emergency medical organisation, roughly equivalent to a combined ambulance service and Red Cross society. Its emergency number is 101, and calls are routed to regional dispatch centres. The Dan region covers the dense metropolitan area around Tel Aviv, which includes Bnei Brak.

In Israeli emergency reporting, casualties are typically classed in a fixed scale. "Serious" is used for people whose injuries are considered potentially life-threatening or requiring significant hospital care, while "light" is used for minor injuries. People described as lightly hurt in residential fires are often treated for smoke inhalation, though the reports here do not say what injuries anyone sustained.

About Bnei Brak

Bnei Brak is a city immediately east of Tel Aviv and one of the most densely populated cities in Israel. It is a major centre of the Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, Jewish community, and much of its housing consists of apartment buildings built close together. Rav Amram Gaon Street is named after a rabbinic authority from the era of the Babylonian Jewish academies.

How the reports developed

The first reports appeared within minutes of each other. Magen David Adom issued its statement, and N12 relayed it almost immediately, stating that the information came from the emergency service. N12's first item said several people had been hurt, two of them seriously. A few minutes later it added that treatment was being given at the scene. The detail that the fire began on the first floor, and the count of about 20 lightly injured residents, came in N12 updates published afterwards, and the final edits changed only small points of wording.

What the reports do not say

The reports do not identify the two people who were seriously injured, give their ages, or say whether they were residents, staff or others. They do not say which hospital, if any, the injured were taken to, or whether any of the roughly 20 lightly hurt people were evacuated for further care.

No cause of the fire is given. The reports do not say how long firefighters took to bring the fire under control, how many fire crews attended, whether the building was evacuated, or how much damage was done to the apartment where it started and to the rest of the building.

The reports also leave open the nature of the building itself. Magen David Adom called it a residential building, while N12's later updates called it a nursing home, and none of the material clarifies whether both descriptions apply, for example a residential building that houses an elderly care facility. Magen David Adom said a further update would follow; none was included in the material available at the time of writing.