Glaring safety issues in group home fire that left 2 men with disabilities dead: report

By the time a fire truck pulled up in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve 2018, flames were erupting from the windows and shooting up over the roofline. 

Trapped inside the small, west Edmonton bungalow were three men, all developmentally disabled, unable to escape. The group home's sole worker had woken up to the blaze and panicked, forgetting even to give the address when she called 911, before fleeing shoeless into the snow.

Billy Beloin, Jason Allinson and Robert Nadeau had been roommates for 14 years in the home they leased from a private owner. Their care was managed by McMan Youth, Family and Community Services Association, an Alberta non-profit social service agency.

Fire crews were able to rescue Nadeau, who eventually recovered, but the other two men didn't make it. Beloin died of smoke inhalation shortly after arriving in hospital; Allinson held on until Christmas Day, but died of smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Although the fire itself was deemed accidental, the circumstances around it were troubling to an Edmonton judge who oversaw a public inquiry into the two deaths. 

In a recently released report, Judge Randal Brandt noted there was no plan for responding to night-time fires — and that it would have been physically impossible for the sole staff member to evacuate the men herself.

"Night-time house fires are not unforeseeable events," wrote the provincial court judge. "This lack of an executable plan was a clear and present danger." 

Brandt's report makes several recommendations to both McMan and the province's Ministry of Seniors, Community and Social Services, calling for better training and more oversight of safety in group homes.

Billy Beloin, the youngest of the trio, was about to celebrate his 38th birthday. 

Beloin's mental and physical disabilities were related to brain damage he suffered as a result of abuse as a baby, said his foster sister Fay Henry. She became his guardian when her mother died about 20 years ago.

When the Henry family brought Beloin home from the hospital as an 18-month-old, doctors said he would never walk, talk or feed himself.

"But yet he learned to do all that," Henry said.

Beloin was blind, but he had a talent for recognizing voices, and could quickly identify family members he hadn't seen for years, Henry said. 

He couldn't tell time, but Henry said he could tell when it was time to watch his favourite television show — The Young and the Restless.