An adult was found dead Monday night after fire tore through a unit at the Edward J. Bury Apartments on Benoit Circle in Chicopee, a public housing complex for seniors and people with disabilities. Firefighters arrived after 7:35 p.m. to find smoke and flames pouring from the building and pushed inside to search for anyone trapped, discovering the victim during that search.
According to NBC Boston, the fire was ultimately contained to the unit where it started, though other residents of the building were temporarily displaced while crews worked the scene. The Red Cross stepped in to assist those displaced residents, the outlet reported. The cause and manner of death had not been determined as of the report and were set to be established through an autopsy.
Massachusetts State Police investigators joined Chicopee fire and police officials in investigating the blaze, per the same report. No further details on the cause of the fire had been released.
A 1963 Complex Built for Chicopee's Elderly and Disabled
The Edward J. Bury Apartments date back to 1963, when the 68-unit complex of two-story brick buildings was built along the Chicopee River at a cost of $13,235.29 per unit, according to the Chicopee Housing Authority. The Benoit Circle development is named for Edward John Bury, a Chicopee native and World War II hero, the authority notes.
The complex operates under Chapter 667 of Massachusetts General Laws, a state program that provides public housing for low-income seniors 60 and older along with non-elderly people with disabilities, capping rent at 30% of income, according to Mass.gov. Non-elderly disabled occupancy under the program is limited to 13.5% statewide. The Chicopee Housing Authority manages 816 state-aided public housing units across nine developments in the city, in addition to 383 federal public housing units across three other properties.
Older Buildings, Accessibility Questions Loom Over Public Housing Stock
State regulations require Chapter 667 developments built or rehabilitated after 1990 to designate at least 5% of units as fully accessible, but older complexes from the 1960s, like the Bury Apartments, rely primarily on retrofits and ground-floor placements rather than built-in accessibility, per Mass.gov. That distinction matters for residents with limited mobility during high-density building evacuations, a concern that has previously drawn federal scrutiny toward the housing authority.
In December 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit against the Chicopee Housing Authority, alleging systemic violations of the Fair Housing Act and Americans with Disabilities Act for refusing reasonable accommodation requests from disabled tenants seeking first-floor or accessible units, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Fatal Fires Have a History in Chicopee
Monday's blaze is not the first fatal fire to strike Chicopee in recent years. In February 2025, a two-alarm house fire on Hudson Avenue killed two residents in their late 60s, a blaze state fire officials later determined was caused accidentally by smoking materials in the living room, according to Mass.gov. In November 2018, a fatal fire at the Doverbrook Estates condominium complex on Meadowlark Lane killed a female resident who was resuscitated at the scene before dying at a Boston hospital.
Statewide, 15,264 structure fires were reported in Massachusetts in 2023, with electrical equipment responsible for 19% of residential civilian fire deaths, while smoking and cooking tied as the second-leading causes at 13% each, per Mass.gov data. As colder weather sets in, the Fire Chiefs Association of Massachusetts notes that home heating equipment fires nationally peak in winter months, with space heaters involved in nearly 30% of heating blazes and 77% of associated civilian fire fatalities from 2019 to 2023, citing National Fire Protection Association data.
The investigation into Monday's fire at the Edward J. Bury Apartments remains ongoing, with no cause yet released and the identity of the deceased pending further confirmation.
