Residents return to Campbell Hall nursing home following weekend fire
County fire officials say the fire started in a heating and cooling unit in the meeting room after an electrical malfunction.
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A dozen nursing home residents displaced in an overnight fire Sunday at the Campbell Hall Rehabilitation Center are now back at the facility.
As News 12 previously reported, one resident was taken to the hospital with smoke inhalation and 11 others were temporarily housed at Valley View Nursing Home following the fire on Kiernan Road in Campbell Hall.
The owner, Jerry Wood, tells News 12 that the residents who were impacted returned late Sunday afternoon and will be housed in an unaffected portion of the facility. Wood says seven resident rooms, the kitchen and the meeting room were damaged – mostly by smoke and water during the firefighting efforts.
“Thank God no residents or employees were injured during the situation and yesterday around 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning, we started gutting the areas that were affected,” says Wood.
County fire officials say the fire started in a heating and cooling unit in the meeting room after an electrical malfunction, which caused heavy smoke conditions in a first-floor wing of the facility.
The fire and evacuation is the second incident at the Campbell Hall Rehabilitation Center in recent years that woke up residents in the middle of the night. On June 7, 2022, the Orange County Hazmat Team was called to the facility after residents were woken up by some kind of noxious odor.
So far, it’s not clear if any violations will be issued because of the fire.
State Health Department records show the facility previously had 158 citations for various violations within the last four years.
“Every nursing home gets citations. If a door doesn’t close properly, you get a citation for it because the hinges are loose or whatever the case may be,” says Wood. “Those things are all fixed immediately, and you go on.”
News 12 has calls out to state and local officials for more information.
Wood says repairs at the facility are expected to take two to three weeks to fully complete. Wood also says all of the building’s HVAC units were immediately inspected following the fire and determined to be safe.
