Review shows extreme hoarding caused one fatal floor collapse and fueled seven fatal fires, underscoring risks as firefighters struggle through debris-filled homes

By Christine Dempsey. The Hour

GLASTONBURY, Conn. — The discovery of a Glastonbury woman’s remains under a mountain of trash in her own home, seven months after she was reported missing, shocked Connecticut and made national headlines. But 73-year-old Mary Notarangelo wasn’t the first state resident to be found dead in a pile of her own garbage, and she may not be the last.

While deaths from hoarding are rare, a CT Insider review of media and police reports from the last 11 years shows it directly led to at least one death and was a factor in more than a half-dozen others, most involving fires.

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Perhaps the most unusual case was the 2014 death of a 66-year-old Cheshire woman who fell to the basement when her floor collapsed under the weight of waist-high debris. Beverly Mitchell died of traumatic asphyxia after suffocating on her own belongings, medical examiners said. Unlike Mitchell’s, the cause of Notarangelo’s death could not be determined.

Hoarding played a major, if less direct, role in other deaths, adding fuel to fires from which it was difficult to escape. They include:

• The 2014 death of a 43-year-old Bridgeport mother in a fire that seriously injured her young daughter and the girl’s father. The mayor attributed the fire to hoarding;
• The 2017 deaths of two people in separate fires in Norwalk, both of which involved hoarding, officials said;
• The 2022 death of a grandmother in East Windsor; firefighters said they were hampered by high winds and hoarding;
• The 2023 death of a 22-year-old Hebron man after hoarded items kept him from getting out of his house during a fire;
• Last year’s death of a Stamford man, 67, whose body was found amid clutter after the fire was out, firefighters said;
• In August, the death of a 75-year-old woman two weeks after she escaped a fire despite clutter that kept crews from going into her burning Killingly house.

Hoarding is a mental health condition in which people have trouble parting with items — including things that have no value — to the point where their homes no longer have enough living space and are dangerous. It is believed to affect between 2-6% of the U.S. population, according to the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. There’s treatment, but no cure, and the problems it creates are not easily resolved.

“It certainly is not a new phenomenon,” said David Tolin, a national expert and director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Institute of Living in Hartford. Still, the American Psychiatric Association didn’t label it as a disorder until 2013, said Tolin, who regularly appeared on “Hoarder,” a reality television show that revealed the struggles of people with the disorder.

Firefighters are often the first to encounter someone with the disorder, which creates a perfect storm of conditions for starting fires and keeping them going: Piled up newspapers, boxes and clothes near heaters or electrical wires can spark and then fuel a blaze so it burns hotter and spreads faster, said New Haven Assistant Fire Chief Dan Coughlin. The clutter also blocks crews trying to put out the fire, sometimes injuring firefighters, he said.

“You’re trying to get down narrow paths, carved out through debris,” Coughlin said.

Crawling on hands and knees

That is what happened on May 8, when five people, three of them New Haven firefighters, were injured in a Salem Street fire in which hoarding played a role, Coughlin said. They rescued a couple who crawled on their hands and knees to escape falling rubble from hoarding; the firefighters’ injuries were minor, and the two residents were expected to recover, he said.

Coughlin estimates as many as half of the city’s fires involve some degree of hoarding.

“We go to about 100-110 fires a year in New Haven, and about half of those involve hoarding,” he said. “It’s very common.”

Mike Thurz, chief of the Glastonbury Fire Department, said, “You’re probably going to find hoarding in every town.” He usually refers to the problem as “unkempt conditions” out of sensitivity for those involved.

Long before his department helped search for Notarangelo, Thurz had to climb a cluttered stairway to help a man having a heart attack on the second floor of his house.

“I was throwing things down the stairs to get to him,” he said. “He was having a medical emergency, and there was so much clutter, it was hard to safely get him to the ambulance.” Like the New Haven couple, the man survived, he said.

The fact that no one died that day at the Glastonbury scene or on May 8 in New Haven is a win for the two departments.

Hebron Fire Marshal Chris Bray wasn’t so lucky in 2023 — his first year in the Hebron job — when a resident died in a fire, likely because the man couldn’t escape the flames due to hoarding. There easily could have been more lives lost that night, he said.

Bray had been working with the family, a mother and her two grown sons, to make their Hope Valley Road house safer. He explained that the residents needed to stop blocking at least two exits, he said. Easier said than done.

One door was clear, but it was too difficult to immediately free up a second, so the family said they would use a first-floor bathroom window in the event of a fire. Bray made them show him how, having family members demonstrate, one at a time, how each was able to climb onto the vanity to get to the window, he said.

“They had to climb up on the toilet, and onto the counter,” Bray said, then “they had to remove the screen.”

“So they were able to demonstrate that they were able to get out that window. It was unorthodox, but it’s the best I could do without making things worse,” Bray said.

As it turned out, that’s how the fire victim’s brother escaped the night of the fire.

“I don’t have a single doubt in my mind that that saved this individual,” Bray said.

‘It’s a very delicate situation’

The patience Bray and his staff showed in working out a compromise is important when helping people with hoarding disorders, experts say.

It’s very common for someone with the disorder to resist attempts to make them safe. They are often emotionally attached to the items that are piling up in their homes.

“We want to be respectful,” Bray said. “It’s a very delicate situation.”

State Rep. Christopher Rosario, D- Bridgeport, said he was working as the director of the city’s anti-blight program when a local woman was struggling with a serious hoarding problem. Staff members were getting resistance, but things began to improve “the moment we started backing off with people showing up in uniforms, and bringing in mental health counselors,” he said.

“Once we started digging into the deep roots of what was going on, we saw changes,” Rosario said.

The changes didn’t happen quickly, though.

“It took a year and a half,” he said.

Elaine Daignault, director of human services in Westport, said a gentler, patient approach is the way to go.

“I think the biggest thing is for us to do it in a non-punitive, compassionate and humane way,” she said.

Daignault works with the neighboring towns of Weston and Wilton to help people who have excessive clutter through the Safe Homes Task Force. Task forces like Safe Homes exist around the state, although many are informal groups of town or city workers who respond to clutter once it becomes a public health and safety matter. In addition to fire and police departments, the local building, health and human services agencies usually get involved, as well as an outside mental health organization.

But if it’s hard to launch a quiet, multi-faceted effort to help people who hoard, it’s even harder to spot them in the first place.

“A lot of times, we don’t know what’s going on in somebody’s home,” Daignault said.

In the Hebron case, the Hope Valley Road home was already on first responders’ radar because of a large number of 911 calls — including false reports of fires — coming from the house and complaints from neighbors, town officials said.

And in the Cheshire case, there were complaints of smells coming from the woman’s house. The town worked with her to clean up her property and she did, but the behavior resumed, the health director said; town workers hadn’t worked with her in the year before her death. The house was eventually demolished.

In Vernon, neighbors’ complaints about odors in May of 2023 and, later, rats, led to a court process and declaration that a house on Warren Avenue was unfit for human occupancy. The resident left, and the town hired a private contractor to clean her house, which was boarded up.

‘Packed to the brim’

The deadly situation in Mary Notarangelo’s Glastonbury house was harder to spot. Despite floor-to-ceiling piles inside and unclaimed food deliveries outside, the house’s deplorable condition went undetected because the house is set back off the road, far from neighbors and shielded by trees. Mail piled up in her mailbox, however, and an acquaintance who occasionally helped her around the house eventually reported her missing. Conditions in the house were so bad that neither police nor firefighters could conduct a thorough search for her without first hiring an excavator. There was a seven-month delay in doing that while police tried to make sure she wasn’t on an extended trip.

Even at homes closer to the road, looks can be deceiving. Rosario said a staff member of a U.S. Congressperson from Connecticut ended up having a serious problem with clutter, something that shocked those who knew the person.

“The outside looked immaculate,” Rosario said. “It wasn’t until the neighbors started complaining of a stench…That house was packed to the brim.”

On the other hand, a house in Hebron that was the subject of a complaint because the resident’s belongings had spilled out onto the porch didn’t pass the test, Bray said. An inspection showed dangerous hoarding was not taking place. He used a measuring scale that Tolin helped create to make the determination. Called the Clutter Image Rating Scale, it has pictures of three different types of rooms, the kitchen, living room and bedroom. Each room is photographed nine times, with each picture portraying a progressively worse level of hoarding. At the ninth level, kitchen counters, tables, beds and dressers are no longer visible, having been completely covered with clothes, bags, boxes and garbage; anyone at Level 4 or higher needs help, according to the International OCD Foundation.

The scale, which is used nationally, allows the user to remove personal opinion from the decision-making process, Bray said.

“That allows us to look at it objectively,” he said.

2,000 pairs of shoes and missing cats

It’s not known exactly why some people compulsively save things, including things like trash that are not valuable.

Like many mental health problems, it is likely due to several factors, such as genetics and difficult life experiences, Hartford HealthCare says. Mary Notarangelo, who was a retired Bridgeport police detective, mentioned in her podcasts that she had a difficult childhood.

Two women with serious clutter in their homes had different reasons for their piles, according to a 2011 story by Hearst Connecticut Media Group. A 74-year-old Bridgeport woman said she liked to help people by storing things for them and collecting items to give to her church, “but now I can hardly move around in here, and my landlord wants to throw me out.”

Another woman, an 80-year-old from Milford, talked about the trauma she endured — such as domestic violence and a murdered son. She had more than 2,000 pairs of shoes and cats that she couldn’t always find amid the piles of dishes, books, coats and knick-knacks.

“I have two televisions in here somewhere, but I can’t find them,” she said.

And she alluded to a fire hazard: Her kitchen was so crowded, “I can turn the stove on with my butt, just going past it.”

The second woman was far from the only state resident thought to be hoarding animals. Animal hoarding also is a serious problem in Connecticut, with animal cruelty charges recently filed against three people accused of hoarding 18 cats and a dog in Cheshire and three more who had moved out of an Old Saybrook home, leaving knee-deep trash and more than 100 animal carcasses, police said.

Tolin said people with hoarding disorder are not able to separate what’s important versus what is not. Brain scans of those with the disorder show markedly higher levels of brain activity when faced with a decision about throwing something out than the scans of people who are not diagnosed with the disorder, he said.

When diagnosed people are asked to consider tossing something, Tolin said, “that section of the brain starts screaming.”

Although there is no cure for hoarding disorder, it can be treated. The Institute of Living holds classes with 8-12 people in each, Tolin said. Sessions last 4-5 months, and group members are expected to practice sorting and parting with possessions.

Cognitive behavioral therapy, a type of psychotherapy that aims to address negative thoughts and behaviors, is effective for hoarding disorders, Tolin said. Done in group sessions, the therapy allows patients to “make more efficient and value-oriented decisions about their possessions,” he said.

“People see dramatic improvement in their quality of life,” Tolin said of his patients. But there are no guarantees.

“We can reliably make people better,” he said, “but we can’t make them completely well.”

How to respond to signs of hoarding disorder

People who want to help those with hoarding disorder are likely to encounter resistance, experts say. Those with the disorder often feel anxious when they have to make a decision about throwing things out.

The Connecticut Hoarding Working Group, formed in 2014 to provide resources that help resolve problems around hoarding, suggests that those working with people with the disorder:

• Wait to enter the home until it’s safe;
• Treat the occupants with respect and create trust by building a rapport with them;
• Refrain from appearing shocked or showing negative facial expressions when engaging;
• Allow them to play an active role in the process, refrain from taking over and cleaning up without their input;
• Let them decide which possessions to get rid of and how;
• Realize that people place a value on their belongings, and give them time to initiate change;
• Take small steps in several sessions so as not to overwhelm them;
• And follow up with them.

Hartford HealthCare suggests that visitors also show empathy and let them know treatment is available.

“Clients have often voiced to us that they would have sought treatment earlier if they had known it was available, that hoarding was a legitimate mental health issue and that there was an effective treatment,” it says on its website about hoarding disorder.

In short, anyone who thinks they know someone who may be suffering from the disorder shouldn’t ignore it, said Thurz, the Glastonbury fire chief.

“Don’t turn a blind eye,” he said. “If you see something, say something.”

“There’s more Mary Notarangelos out there.”

For help with hoarding, contact:

• The International OCD Foundation has a locator at helpforhoarding.org that you can use to find help in your area:
• The Clutterers Anonymous World Service Organization, Inc. at https://clutterersanonymous.org/
• The Anxiety Disorders Center, The Institute of Living, 200 Retreat Ave., Hartford, CT 06106, 860-545-7685, https://instituteofliving.org/programs-services/anxiety-disorders-center/what-we-treat-at-the-adc/hoarding-disorder
• Or 211 to help you find services in your area.

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