Growing concerns over hazards of hoarding

BOSTON — Hoarding is a serious condition that impacts every segment of the population.

It is estimated 15 million Americans are hoarders.

That is three times the number of patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Dr. Danny Mendoza, chair of the psychiatry department at Beth Israel Deaconess Plymouth, has treated patients who have hoarded everything from toilet paper to old newspapers.

“It’s different than collecting," Mendoza said. "Hoarding entails the accumulation of stuff that has no positive benefit to the hoarder, and has a profound impact on day to day existence.”

One of the clues that person has crossed the line into hoarding is that they can no longer use items, or even rooms, for their intended use.

For example, a bed or stove might be covered by so much stuff, they are no longer functional.

The Fall River fire department responded to a hoarding situation on Orswell Street last month.

“Firefighters had to actually move things out of the way to be able to knock the fire down,” acting Deputy Chief Sean Flannery said. "In our profession, seconds do matter and when our progress advancing a line or doing a search is impeded, in zero visibility conditions, you can imagine what it is like. It's very difficult for the firefighters to do their jobs.”

In this case, they couldn’t.

Homeowner Lillian Cordeiro died on an upper floor.

“With this house, it was like almost every room was being used for storage and there were boxes upon boxes piled upon each other," Flannery said. "Bags of personal belongings everywhere. It was literally impossible to walk thru the rooms without running into something.”

Fire risks soar in hoarding situations.

There have been a number of fatalities across the state in recent years.

Concerns about these types of issues prompted Scituate officials to create a Hoarding Response Team.

Social service manager Laura Minier is in the process of re-applying for a grant to expand outreach and prevention.

“We know that there is a lack of providers who treat hoarding disorder, so one of the ways we've been able to mitigate that is to provide support groups to the community," she said.

Minier says hoarding is now recognized as a clinical mental health condition which means more treatment options should start being offered, and being covered by insurance.

That’s good news for Flannery as he reflected on the scene in witnessed in July.

“There are no guarantees that the outcome would have been different, but I like to think that it might have been," Flannery  said.

Cox Media Group