Cops release daunting 911 calls from Fla. nursing home after Hurricane Irma
The 911 calls were calm at first.
The staff at the sweltering Florida nursing home soon panicked as patient after patient stopped breathing due to the facility’s catastrophic loss of air conditioning in the wake of Hurricane Irma.
“Oh, my God. This is crazy,” an overwhelmed nurse sighed, while struggling to look up a patient’s information on a computer.
She was downstairs and making the fifth exasperated emergency call from the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills on Sept. 13 as nurses on a floor above her tried desperately to save a woman in cardiac arrest.
Another employee could be heard muttering, “Whatta night.”
Calls released by the Hollywood Police Department on Monday show employees began calling at 3 a.m. and those pleas for help continued for another three hours. Nurses were reporting triple-digit fevers, respiratory distress and cardiac arrest for several elderly patients.
Operators at the Broward County Emergency Operation Center soon realized this was not an isolated incident after asking for the umpteempth time if additional personnel would be needed.
“You guys have a few other paramedics here, so I’m not sure,” the nursing home staffer replied.
The operators quickly dispatched for additional help, believing “something” was going on and that people had died.
“The call that came in was a little daunting,” the operator told a nearby hospital. “It looks like they need more assistance.”
The nursing home would lose eight patients that first day, and six more would die through early October. Their ages ranged from 57 to 99.
Police are conducting a criminal probe into the deaths and why about 150 of the home’s patients were never evacuated to Memorial Regional Hospital — which was across the street.
No arrests have been made.
Since the mass deaths, the state has revoked the nursing home’s license and Gov. Rick Scott signed an executive order for similar facilities to install back-up generators for air conditioning.
The power had been off since Sept. 10, when the monster storm ravaged most of south Florida.
With News Wire Services
