Nursing home toll reaches 12
57-year-old latest victim
Stricken with a rare, lifelong disease, Dolores Biamonte lost her ability to walk, talk and see over the years, forcing her into a nursing home while still young.
The 57-year-old was among the residents evacuated from the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, the sweltering nursing home that lost air conditioning for three days following Hurricane Irma. Biamonte made it out alive, but now is among the dozen dead residents.
She was the youngest victim — the oldest
was 99-year-old Albertina Vega, who was a month shy of celebrating her 100th birthday.
Biamonte died late Thursday, according to relatives and the Broward Medical Examiner. Her death is part of a joint criminal investigation by Hollywood police and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into the Sept. 13 mass tragedy.
Roberta Biamonte said she spent some final moments late Thursday with her aunt, who was in hospice care after the nursing home evacuation. She said her goodbyes and left around 9 p.m. Her aunt died shortly after that.
“It’s sad, but she’s not suffering anymore. She’s missed deeply,” Roberta Biamonte, of Fort Lauderdale, said. “I’m proud to have her name as my middle name.”
Although her condition — cherry-red spot myoclonus syndrome — impaired Biamonte greatly, respiratory distress is not a symptom of the disease. She developed erratic breathing requiring an oxygen mask after spending days in the sweltering nursing home and becoming dehydrated, said family attorney, Sean Greene.
Dolores Biamonte was bedridden for about 20 years, her niece said, as the disease gradually robbed her of her abilities.
“She was able to walk with someone holding on to her, and then it got worse as she got older,” Roberta Biamonte said.
When Dolores Biamonte’s parents died, other relatives were unable to give her round-the-clock care and she was moved into a nursing home in 2006. She moved to Hollywood Hills about two years ago, Greene said.
Roberta Biamonte said she will always remember her aunt’s love of all things feline. Dolores Biamonte’s brother would sometimes bring a cat to Hollywood Hills to delight her.
“She loved watching Animal Planet; she watched it every day. She couldn’t see, so she would listen to it,” her niece said. “She had a passion for cats. Anything that had a cat on it, from a shirt to a little cat figure, if it had a cat, she wanted it.
“And she loved painting her nails when she was able to do more, when I was younger,” Roberta Biamonte said.
Since the first eight victims died Sept. 13, authorities have been investigating how the nursing home cared for patients; the state has shut down the facility; and legislators have vowed to better protect nursing home patients — the same promise they have made in the past.
The deaths also have raised questions about Florida Power & Light Co.’s response to a life-threatening situation and have resulted in intense finger-pointing among nursing home administrators, state, local and utility officials about who is at fault.
The eight people who died on Sept. 13, three days after the storm, were: Albertina Vega, 99; Carolyn Eatherly, 78; Manuel Mario Mendieta, 96; Gail Nova, 70; Bobby Owens, 84; Miguel Antonio Franco, 92; Estella Hendricks, 71; and Betty Hibbard, 84.
In the days after the initial deaths, three others died: Martha Murray, 94; Carlos Canal, 93; and Alice Thomas, 94.
Post-death body temperatures were as high as 109.9 degrees. The cause of death for all victims remains under investigation by the medical examiner.
If any more Hollywood Hills nursing home deaths are reported in days to come, Broward Medical Examiner Craig Mallak and his team will be careful in attributing fatalities to the heat, he said.
Elderly patients who had returned to the same condition they were in prior to the power outage would likely not be linked to the tragic incident, if they happen to subsequently die, Mallak said.
“We’re kind of in unchartered territory here,” he said. “This gets a little bit murkier… That’s why we’re a little slower on the uptake on this.
“Making that causation line extend from the day of this incident to the day of their death gets harder and harder as the days go on,” Mallak said.
For all subsequent deaths, medical examiners will be combing through deceased patients’ medical records, interviewing relatives about their conditions and responsiveness prior to their deaths, all in an effort to be clear on whether the nursing home’s temperature played a role in those deaths.
Greene, the Biamonte family’s attorney, said relatives knew shortly after the evacuation that she was not going to make it. They met with doctors three days after the incident and were given a grim prognosis.
“At that meeting, the doctor said, ‘she won’t survive,’” Greene said. “The body was so dehydrated, her organs were too weak. Her body just wasn’t going to survive.”