County wants better hurricane prep
Nursing homes lacking emergency generators to keep residents cool. A shortage of trained medical staff to work in shelters. Inadequate evacuation plans for health care facilities.
Those are some issues Palm Beach County officials want solutions for before the next hurricane strikes South Florida.
State Rep. Emily Slosberg, DBoca Raton, said state legislators are paying attention after 12 patients at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills died in the
sweltering heat following Hurricane Irma.
“I have a lot of faith this session we are going to see legislation coming out about emergency response,” she said.
Palm Beach County’s list of proposals include ideas to improve conditions at shelters, nursing homes and assisted-living facilities.
The state should provide medical staffing, including nurses and mental health professionals, for all shelters.
Funding should be allocated for the county to provide cots and sleeping mats in shelters.
Nursing homes, assistedliving centers and group homes should be required to have generators that can power air conditioners during outages.
State employees are needed to monitor evacuation plans for nursing homes and penalize those that are in noncompliance.
Issues at shelters
David Seltzer spent one night weathering Hurricane Irma at a shelter at Palm Beach Central High School.
He doesn’t ever want to go back.
“One night in that facility was enough, and we decided to take our chances at home,” said Seltzer, an 80-year-old resident of suburban Lake Worth.
He said he saw a woman sleeping on the floor who had just been discharged from a hospital after surgery with nothing more than a sheet and a nightgown. Another woman in a wheelchair should have been in a special needs shelter, but instead, she was in a general shelter with no one to assist her, Seltzer said.
No cots or sleeping mats were provided, he said.
Bill Johnson, director of emergency management for Palm Beach County, said while there are areas for improvement, the shelters did exactly what they were supposed to do — keep people safe during the storm. About 17,000 people sought refuge in the county’s shelters.
Officials need to do a better job of telling the public what they can expect at shelters, he said.
“We evacuate people out of harm’s way and put them into hardened facilities with the sole purpose of keeping them alive,” he said. “These are not cruise ships or hotels. These are life rafts. You will walk out of that school alive.”
Cots are provided to people whose homes have been damaged and need a longer stay in a shelter, Johnson said.
Hurricane Irma marked the first time the county implemented a new staffing policy for shelters, relying on county and school employees to take the lead in working at the shelters instead of volunteers from the American Red Cross. That created some discord from employees who had to work, but County Administrator Verdenia Baker said the change was needed to ensure the shelters were adequately staffed.
The county also received too many last-minute registrations for the shelter that accommodates people with special medical needs, Johnson said. Health care facilities shouldn’t dump patients into the county’s shelters as a storm approaches, he said.
Palm Beach County Mayor Paulette Burdick said people with Alzheimer’s disease needing special attention rode out the storm at Palm Beach Central High School instead of at a special shelter equipped to meet their needs.
“It’s something we need to consider,” she said. “It’s not just a Palm Beach County issue. It’s a statewide issue on how we provide a safe place for them and their caregivers.”
Another issue that needs to be addressed is South Florida’s large drug recovery industry, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said.
Sober homes aren’t required to have emergency plans, and residents were sent to shelters without any notice being given to the county, he said.
At least two people overdosed on opioids while at Palm Beach County shelters, officials said.
Protecting the elderly
The state needs to do a better job of protecting the elderly during hurricanes, Slosberg said.
Gov. Rick Scott used his emergency powers to require nursing homes and assisted-living centers have generators that could provide back-up power. He issued the order on Sept. 16 and gave nursing homes 60 days to comply.
LeadingAge Florida, a group that represents nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, is challenging Scott’s order, writing in a complaint “that there is no emergency that requires the imposition of an impossible deadline.”
Slosberg is supporting efforts to make the generator requirement law. More scrutiny needs to be given to disaster plans submitted by nursing homes, she said.
Several nursing homes encountered staff shortages because employees evacuated as Irma approached, Slosberg said. She is planning a bill that would allow nursing students who have completed at least one semester to volunteer as certified nursing assistants at shelters, nursing homes and assisted-living facilities during a state of emergency.
While the review found some areas that need to be improved, overall the county did a good job of keeping everyone safe, Johnson said.
“Disasters are disasters, and not everything always goes according to plan,” he said. “We can always do better.”