No S. Florida nursing homes are FPL priority

Despite deaths, senior centers not on list for post-storm help

The deaths of 12 residents in a Hollywood nursing home last September sparked outrage that the facility was not on Florida Power & Light Co.’s priority power restoration list.

This year, Broward and Miami-Dade counties sought to add nursing homes and assisted living facilities to the lists they submitted to FPL.

But a month into the 2018 hurricane season, nothing has changed. No senior citizen facility in South Florida has priority status.

FPL rejected both counties’ lists, saying they don’t meet the utility’s requirements. Palm Beach County’s list was approved — but it doesn’t include nursing homes or assisted living facilities.

Meanwhile, as FPL and the counties continue pointing fingers at each other about the restoration lists, less than a quarter of South Florida’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities were ready with backup power, as mandated by state law, at the start of the hurricane season.

To make the FPL list, critical institutions must be within range of certain main power lines. FPL requires that counties prioritize

20 percent of the main power lines that provide electricity to their areas. Hospitals and 911 dispatch centers are automatically on the priority list. After that, counties choose what they want to include.

“Broward County is absolutely free to designate nursing homes as [part of its list]. FPL only requires that the county remain within the communicated guidelines to facilitate priority restoration,” FPL spokeswoman Florencia Contesse said in an email.

FPL established the 20 percent guideline for counties because “if every main power line were deemed a priority then, in effect, none would be a priority,” she said.

The process for restoration lists is as follows: Each county’s emergency operations officials typically review the prior year’s list and may ask FPL to make certain changes for the current year. A county may ask for modifications to the list. County emergency management officials may meet in person with FPL executives or engineers, or otherwise communicate about requested changes. When that process is completed, and both the county and FPL agree, the county is deemed “compliant” by the utility.

Broward said it submitted its 2018 list on May 11, requesting that nursing homes and assisted living facilities along certain identified power lines be included.

Broward, which has more than 300 nursing homes and assisted living facilities, is especially concerned about the issue because of its experience last September at the nowclosed Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills. The nursing home lost air conditioning in Hurricane Irma, creating sweltering conditions inside and leading to the deaths of 12 residents.

Alphonso Jefferson Jr., assistant county administrator who oversees emergency management, said Broward asked FPL for specific information about which structures are on a certain power line and how many of them can be restored quickly after a storm. He said there could be a nursing home, for example, on the same power line as a hospital, so why not include it on the list?

But FPL denied the county’s “entire 2018 submission,” Jefferson said, and told Broward it would rely on the 2017 list for now, as the hurricane season is already underway.

Juno Beach-based FPL said it has been in communication over the issue with Broward since February, including four letters exchanged between Jefferson and FPL. In a June 15 letter to Jefferson, FPL said it was unable to provide the materials requested by Broward because of “confidentiality and security concerns.”

“In order to prioritize restoration, some limitations must be made,” FPL’s governmental customer adviser, Jocelyn Wright, told Broward’s emergency management in a May 22 letter rejecting the county’s 2018 list.

Broward’s list “significantly exceeds our guidelines, and, if accepted, would prevent FPL from truly prioritizing restoration in Broward County,” FPL wrote.

Like Broward, MiamiDade also submitted a 2018 list that included nursing homes and assisted living facilities, but it was rejected.

“It was determined by FPL that the list exceeded the agreed 20 percent threshold,” said Charles Cyrille, deputy director of Miami-Dade’s Office of Emergency Management.

“We are currently in the process of revising the list to meet the 20 percent,” Cyrille said last week.

Miami-Dade has nearly 900 such facilities, according to the state.

“We have been working closely with Miami-Dade County to receive a compliant list for priority restoration,” Contesse said.

In Palm Beach County, officials said they didn’t include nursing homes and assisted living facilities on their list because there wasn’t room.

Bill Johnson, Palm Beach County’s director of emergency management, said critical infrastructure on the list fills up fast. For example, for Palm Beach County, “most fire stations are not on the critical list.”

He said it often comes down to a negotiation with FPL: “I’ll trade you — put two facilities [on the list] and I’ll give up this one in the middle of nowhere. Will that work?” he said.

Johnson said the fact that no nursing homes or assisted living facilities are on the list is “not ideal,” but he said the 20 percent limit is “realistic” after a disaster.

“We always try to push that,” Johnson said.

The county has more than 200 nursing homes and assisted living facilities, according to the state.

Being on a priority list could become less critical if more facilities have the backup power that’s required by state law.

In March, Gov. Rick Scott signed bills making permanent emergency rules that nursing homes and assisted living facilities have up to 96 hours of backup power.

However, just 346 nursing homes and assisted living facilities out of about 1,444 in South Florida, or 24 percent, had implemented backup power plans by June 1, according to data from Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration in Tallahassee.

More than 30 percent in South Florida were given extensions to implement their plans, as far out as Jan. 1, 2019. And 45 percent didn't respond at all.

So as it negotiates a priority restoration list with FPL, Broward is encouraging nursing homes and assisted living facilities to be prepared with backup power.

“This is a state requirement,” Jefferson said. “The state has to step up and make sure they’re doing the right thing for those facilities.”

“In order to prioritize restoration, some limitations must be made.” Jocelyn Wright, FPL