On December 16, 1989, at 1629 a security guard at the Sommerset Retirement Home, 22355 Providence Village Drive in Sterling, Virginia, called 911 to report that alarm bells were sounding and that smoke was in the building. The facility was a new (l-year-old) 3-story retirement home housing elderly people in apartment units. Firefighters on the first arriving truck, which was at the scene two minutes after receiving the alarm, found smoke coming from the roof and a first-floor lobby filled with relatively calm elderly residents waiting to be evacuated from the building.