Eight nursing home seniors die in post-Irma heat
Hurricane knocked out AC, leaving centre sweltering and raising safety concerns
HOLLYWOOD, FLA.— Eight patients at a sweltering nursing home died after hurricane Irma knocked out the air conditioning, raising fears Wednesday about the safety of Florida’s four million senior citizens amid widespread power outages that could go on for days.
Hollywood police Chief Tom Sanchez said investigators believe the deaths at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills were heatrelated, and added: “The building has been sealed off and we are conducting a criminal investigation.” He did not elaborate.
“It’s a sad state of affairs,” Sanchez said. “We all have elderly people in facilities, and we all know we depend on those people in those facilities to care for a vulnerable elderly population.”
Gov. Rick Scott called on Florida emergency workers to immediately check on nursing homes and assisted-living facilities to make sure the patients are safe. And he ordered an investigation into what he called an “unfathomable” situation.
“I am demanding answers,” he tweeted.
The home said in a statement that the hurricane had knocked out a transformer that powered the AC.
Exactly how the deaths happened was under investigation, with Sanchez saying authorities have not ruled anything out, including carbon monoxide poisoning from generators. He also said investigators will look into how many windows were open in the nursing home.
Across the street from the nursing home sat a fully air-conditioned hospital, Memorial Regional.
The deaths came as people trying to put their lives back together in hurricane-stricken Florida and beyond confronted a multitude of new hazards in the storm’s wake, including tree-clearing accidents and lethal fumes from generators. breathing difficulties and other heatrelated ills, authorities said.
Nursing homes in Florida are required by state and federal law to file an emergency plan that includes evacuation plans for residents. Any plan submitted by the Hollywood centre was not immediately available.
Calls to the owner and other officials at the Hollywood home were not immediately returned, but the facility’s administrator, Jorge Carballo, said in a statement that it was “co-operating fully with relevant authorities to investigate the circumstances that led to this unfortunate and tragic outcome.”
Through a representative, Carballo told the SunSentinel newspaper that the home has a backup generator but that it does not power the air conditioning.
The nursing home was bought at a bankruptcy auction two years ago after its previous owner went to prison for Medicare fraud, according to news reports at the time of the sale.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates nursing homes, gives the Hollywood centre a below-average rating, two stars on its five-star scale. But the most recent state inspection reports showed no deficiencies in the area of emergency plans.
Florida, long one of America’s top retirement destinations, has the highest proportion of people 65 and older of any state — one in five of its 20 million residents. As of 2016, Florida had about 680 nursing homes.
As of Tuesday, the number of people without electricity in the steamy late-summer heat had dropped to 6.8 million — about a third of Florida’s population.
Utility officials warned it could take 10 days or more for power to be fully restored. The number of people remaining in shelters fell to less than 13,000.
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson called the deaths in Hollywood “an inexcusable tragedy” and called on authorities to get to the bottom of it.
“We need to make sure we’re doing everything we can to keep our seniors safe during this difficult time,” he said.