At a press conference Tuesday, July 15, outside FRFD headquarters, Bacon said the city has typically relied on overtime for coverage in the event of a crisis -- but in an event like the Gabriel House “you can never have enough staff,” and that he is primarily focused on the lives that were saved.

You could have had 100 firefighters show up on that scene and it wouldn’t have been enough,” Jeffrey Bacon said at a news briefing outside the fire department’s headquarters Tuesday.

Residents of the Gabriel House in Fall River, Massachusetts described the terrifying moments that smoke filled the assisted living home​ and they had to find a way to escape.