Valleyview Residents Safe After Sunday Evening Fire

The roughly 40 residents of  were spending the night elsewhere Sunday after a fire spread heavy smoke through the facility.

Some of the residents were headed to , where they would sleep in available beds there, said Tom Nelson, Northfield Fire Department assistant fire chief.

"We're still working out the details to that," Nelson said at the scene of the fire Sunday night. "We're going to make sure the residents will be comfortable."

On its Facebook page Sunday night, Northfield Hospital says it admitted eight Valleyview residents: one person who was treated and admitted early Sunday evening, and seven others who were "in need of short-term housing and were admitted later for observation."

A ninth resident was transported by ambulance to Abbott-Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis complaining of chest pains.

"To handle the influx of patients, Northfield Hospital declared an Orange Alert at 8:05 p.m." the Facebook post says. "The alert was cancelled at 10 p.m."

Late Sunday night, Angela Storch with the American Red Cross Rice/LeSueur/Waseca Counties said at least 30 residents would be taken to a shelter staffed by the Red Cross in Owatonna.

"Red Cross nurses and disaster volunteers will work overnight to maintain client services," Storch said in an email.

Residents were forced from their rooms at about 7:30 p.m. Sunday—or, as Nelson said, just after halftime of Super Bowl XLVI—when a small fire was discovered in an unoccupied room. The fire was extinguished quickly, but heavy smoke spread throughout the assisted-living complex, at 812 Linden St. N.

The evacuees headed across the street to after leaving their rooms.

"We're fortunate this wasn't a whole lot worse," Nelson said. "Northfield Police were here right away as first responders and our firefighters were on the scene quickly, as well."

Police and fire personnel did get a scare early on, though, when a handful of residents were unaccounted for. But, those residents were located within minutes of the evacuation.

Still, firefighters were prepared for the worst, as they requested three ambulance services—Northfield Hospital's Emergency Medical Services, Allina and North Memorial Health Care—to send units to the scene. Several of the ambulance squads stood at the ready at Emmaus Church as firefighters cleaned up the fire scene.

also dispatched several small buses to transport residents to their overnight accommodations.

Nelson said the cause of the fire had yet to be determined Sunday night. An investigator from the Minnesota State Fire Marshal Division would assist in finding the cause.

"We called the fire marshal because this is a health care facility," he said.

According to its website, Valleyview of Northfield has 40 individual rooms and three couples rooms, all on a one-level campus.