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City's Nursing Home Evac Plans a Disaster
By Jess Wisloski and Adam Lisberg, New York Daily News
USA
November 1, 2005
More than half of New York's nursing homes have no plan to evacuate sick and vulnerable patients in the face of a hurricane or other disaster, officials revealed yesterday.
"There is great confusion on the part of the nursing home industry about exactly what we are supposed to do," Harry Ackley, life safety director for a nursing home trade association, told an Assembly committee yesterday.
The state Health Department has long required nursing homes to have plans for evacuating their buildings - but not for moving injured, elderly or incapacitated residents to safety elsewhere, he said.
But after Hurricane Katrina left New Orleans nursing homes and hospitals swamped and helpless, the Health Department and the city Office of Emergency Management are now scrambling to help nursing homes write evacuation plans.
"They're going to be able to get people to the sidewalks, but they're not going to be able to get them any farther," said Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester), who says the city is woefully unprepared for the big hurricane that experts say will strike New York sooner or later.
A state Health Department survey found less than half of nursing homes had plans to transport evacuated residents. Only 26% had disaster plans and just 4% were prepared to summon extra staff in an emergency.
Emergency Management Commissioner Joseph Bruno said the city is pressuring the state "to do the job they should have been doing," but will find a way to evacuate every vulnerable nursing home resident if it has to.
Health Department officials didn't respond to several requests for comment from the Daily News.
The problem is most acute for the 17 nursing homes in the Rockaways, where 3,500 residents - including 1,000 who can't walk - live on a hurricane-vulnerable peninsula with few ways in or out.
"If you had to move everyone out of the Rockaways, the question is how and where," Ackley said. "We're still trying to figure out how and where."
Virginia McKeon, administrator of the 228-bed Rockaway Care Center, said she tried to hire 10 bus companies to be on standby if they ever need to evacuate, but none would help. Now she's organizing other Rockaways nursing homes to push for attention and resources.
"We're going to have to start somewhere," said Patrick Russell, administrator of the Park Nursing Home on Beach 115th St. "Obviously, homes in Astoria or Long Island City don't share the same problems that we do in Rockaway."
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