As Hurricane Rita barrels toward the Texas coast, not everything is going as planned among the nearly three dozen nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Galveston County.
By state standards, each of the businesses should have an emergency plan on the books spelling out where and how residents — some bed-ridden, wheelchair-bound or on oxygen — will flee from the winds and waves.
The importance of this was highlighted just three weeks ago when Hurricane Katrina flooded Mississippi and Louisiana. In New Orleans alone, at least 150 of the dead were from nursing homes and hospitals that did not evacuate.
But up until this week, at least one facility in Galveston County still planned to shelter in place if a hurricane hit, Friendswood officials say. Others say their plans fell through and at least two have turned to city officials and local emergency services for evacuation help.
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Plan On The Books
One of the single worst Katrina disasters took place at a nursing home called St. Rita’s, where 34 residents died.
The owners, who have been charged with involuntary manslaughter, had an evacuation plan to bus residents to Baton Rouge or Alexandria, La. They just didn’t follow it.
In Galveston County, all of the assisted living facilities and nursing homes contacted this week said they had an evacuation plan on the books. But reality has changed things for some.
At the Friendship Haven nursing home in Friendswood, Administrator Anne Exley intended to take her nearly 125 elderly and handicapped residents to a North Houston nursing home.
Two weeks ago, she learned that facility wasn’t available.
“The home we had originally said they are updating their facility,” she said.
On Monday, she began looking throughout the state for extra space. Eventually she found a church in Bryan-College Station and some nursing homes in Mineola with enough extra beds for her residents.
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‘Slip Through The Cracks’
State officials have worked to improve disaster plans for long-term care facilities, but admit more needs to be done.
Three years ago Frances Garcia, a compliance reviewer with the Department of Aging and Disability Services, started a program to catalogue emergency plans for nursing homes and assisted living facilities in her district, which includes Galveston County.
She was surprised by what she saw.
“We got some terrible plans the first year,” she recalled. “They didn’t know how to even begin. One wrote ‘I am going to go out the front door and if it is locked we will go out the back door.’”
So Garcia did some research. She drafted a template and sent it out to facilities. Planning improved the next year.
In theory, state inspectors should write up facilities with inadequate plans. This does happen, Garcia said, but it is inevitable that some “slip through the cracks.”
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Local Review
The state regulates long-term care facilities, but local emergency managers are supposed to review the evacuation plans. In theory, all long-term care facilities should arrange for their own transportation and shelters.
By Tuesday, most in the county had done this.
But some say last minute changes, like families failing to pick up residents, forced them to seek government assistance.
In Galveston, Concord Homes manager Eileen Penn said she had more residents than planned. As a result, she began Monday registering them for evacuation in city buses.
“Our initial plan was to evacuate to a nursing home in Pasadena, but now (many) families are not going to be taking their family members,” she said.
Peaceful Living Care Home, an assisted living facility in Texas City, had the same problem.
Administrator Florence Jones spent Monday calling and recalling the 2-1-1 evacuation-assistance phone number. She said she needed a house for herself, her staff and her clients. The operator said to call back next week.
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‘Kicked It Up A Notch’
In Friendswood, Emergency Management Director Terry Byrd put two nursing homes on a deficiency list for inadequate evacuation plans this year.
One of those, Friendswood Home Health Care, had no intentions of evacuating, he said. Katrina changed that.
“I am glad to report to you that they have kicked it up a notch,” he said this week as voluntary hurricane evacuations began. “The facilities are revamping their plans. Since Katrina they are really working.”
The county called for mandatory evacuations Wednesday.
Patricia Beem, administrator for Friendswood Health Care, said the facility has safely rode out storms for 30 years. She plans to bus her patients to a nursing home in Centerville.
Byrd says some businesses believe they are far enough inland to avoid hurricane floods. Others worry — legitimately — that they could lose residents in laborious evacuations, he said.
“Look at what happened during evacuation from Ivan last year,” he said. “Several nursing homes did lose patients. The move actually killed them.”
