Hurricane Ian tore through Florida, flattening certain areas like Fort Myers Beach, killing nearly 130 people, causing billions of dollars of property damage, and upending countless lives. With the Sunshine State a beacon for retirees, the majority of people who died in the storm were 60 or older.
Many residents forced to evacuate were in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. According to the Florida Health Care Association (FHCA), 40 nursing home facilities evacuated about 3,400 patients before or during the storm. About 115 assisted living facilities statewide evacuated 4,600 residents.
Some Nursing Home Patients at Nearby Facilities
Nine of the 40 nursing home facilities remain closed due to flooding. Patients are staying in nearby skilled nursing home centers or at facilities that were not in the storm’s path. The staff at each facility is working to make the displaced residents feel comfortable and monitoring for transfer trauma, according to the FHCA.
“I haven’t heard stories that have indicated any sort of negligence on the part of facilities,” says Jeff Johnson, AARP Florida’s state director. “Instead, I’ve heard stories of the facilities really going above and beyond to try and secure their residents from harm. I say this deeply cautiously, because you never know what’s going to come to light, but at this point, it looks as though [nursing homes] managed to get through this one relatively well.”
Seventy-eight nursing facilities lost power during Ian, which has since been restored. After over a dozen people died in a South Florida facility due to a lack of air conditioning after Hurricane Irma, Florida law began requiring all assisted living and nursing homes to have access to backup power and at least four days’ worth of generator fuel.
Florida is one of the largest nursing home states in the U.S., with about 700 facilities and 70,000 residents, plus another 3,000 licensed assisted living facilities. The information being disseminated so far has shown that disaster-planning lessons have been learned from the state’s previous devastating storms that put assisted living residents and nursing home patients in harm’s way.
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