‘She was so scared’: Family seeks answers after 105-year-old woman stuck in stairwell during care home fire

An elderly woman was left in a stairwell for hours after her care home in Mission went up in flames.

The family of a 105-year-old great-grandmother wants to know how the senior was initially left behind in a stairwell, for hours, when her Mission, B.C., care home caught fire. She died days later.

“Those are our biggest questions: what went wrong? Why did she spend two hours in a stairwell?” asked Trina Ridley.

Her grandmother, Elsie Hellstrom, had been living at Chartwell Carrington House when it caught fire last March.

More than 125 residents were moved to safety.

But Hellstrom wasn’t initially one of them, later telling her granddaughter, Pamela Callaghan, that she was terrified.

“She (Hellstrom) was so scared. She got stuck in the stairwell,” explained Callaghan.

“She said she was calling for help, she said she was pressing her alert button. Then she’d get hit with a wave of water again,” said Callaghan.

The family said that it was only after a relative couldn’t find Hellstrom at the evacuation centre that anyone realized she was still inside the care home.

Firefighters went back into the burning building and found her. She was rushed to the hospital.

“She said, ‘I thought I was going to die freezing in a fire,” said Callaghan, who had spoken with her grandmother on the phone.

Her family said the senior died four days later from smoke inhalation.

“Why weren’t the stairwells swept multiple times during the initial starting of the fire?” wondered Ridley.

In an email statement, a spokesperson for the care home operator said they were deeply saddened by Hellstrom’s death.

Mary Perrone Lisi, communications director for Chartwell, also wrote that, “Chartwell has well-established emergency response protocols that include procedures for resident accountability during an evacuation.”

“Our team initiated those protocols and worked alongside emergency responders as the situation evolved, following their direction once they assumed command of the scene,” she wrote.

“Resident accountability is an ongoing process during an emergency response, and our employees continued to support first responders and established accountability procedures throughout the incident,” the statement reads, adding that the employees demonstrated “extraordinary commitment” in challenging circumstances.

Mission Fire and the BC Coroners Service are looking into exactly what happened.

Hellstrom’s family said the licensing branch for assisted living and community care has also launched an investigation

Meanwhile, Hellstrom’s granddaughters fondly remember her.

“She lived life, right to the very end,” said Ridley.

The granddaughters said they are pushing for answers in hopes that getting them may protect other vulnerable seniors in the future.