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State Legislators Urge Reform for Care of Seniors During Emergencies
By Mark Hollis, Sun-Sentinel
USA
November 7, 2005
Penny Mandel watched terrified from her back porch in Century Village as hunks of an air conditioning compressor, pieces of a gutter and debris flew off the roof and dropped into the grass like confetti during Hurricane Wilma.
There was no power in the west Boca Raton retirement community, home to 10,000 seniors, for a week afterward. The elevators were out and those who were disabled or in wheelchairs were trapped in third- and fourth-floor apartments, unable to call for help on telephones that didn't work.
Now the residents watch the skies, praying for sunshine. Their roofs are badly damaged and already, Mandel's carpets and walls are so mildewed she temporarily moved out. Others with no friends or family, who often are the oldest or the sickest, have no choice but to stay and hope the repair trucks will roll in soon.
"We are in a mess and nobody is helping us," said Mandel. In her late 50s, she is by far the youngest in her 72-unit building. "Most of my neighbors are elderly and they are living in apartments that really are uninhabitable," she said.
State legislators from Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, and activists for the elderly are overwhelmed by citizen calls for urgent reform and are demanding sweeping changes.
The calls for action include pleas for a registry of elderly people that would identify where seniors live and what their special needs would be in a storm.
Several legislators say Florida government must examine how its public agencies deal with elderly residents during emergencies. They also say the state must quickly establish a plan -- a "Standard Operating Procedures' manual," one legislator said -- for getting urgent attention to homebound retirees.
Still other legislators and elder advocates want Florida to create a new high-level advocate, or elder czar, to coordinate emergency assistance to the elderly. They say that coordinating function gets lost among several state agencies, including the departments of Community Affairs, Public Health and Elder Affairs.
Area legislators insist they aren't looking for someone to blame or have any desire to turn the Wilma nightmares for seniors into a new election-season issue. Rather, they say, they want changes before the next hurricane strikes.
"There's been a lack of coordination at all levels of government," said Rep. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton. "For our age-75-plus, the people who made our country, we let them down. Now we don't need to blame anyone. We just need a new disaster plan. We need some kind of a position that is in charge of taking care of their needs."
State officials encourage the elderly to live outside costly nursing homes and assisted shelters.
"We've pushed for more diversion from nursing homes, keeping people in their own homes," said State Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston. "But if we keep them in their homes, we have a responsibility as a state to make sure there is a plan that caseworkers get to them in time of need."
Top officials in Gov. Jeb Bush's administration say assistance to the elderly in the wake of Wilma has been orderly and the legislative demands for change need to be addressed over time. They say local and regional care providers, and thousands of volunteers, delivered miraculous assistance, particularly to those living in nursing homes and assisted-living centers. But they agree more can be done.
Carole Green, secretary of the state Department of Elder Affairs, defends her department's handling of the elder needs in the storm. But she said if the department didn't respond appropriately it might be because local authorities didn't get them enough information to help.
"If there were people who felt that we weren't doing the job we should have done, it would have been nice to have gotten a call," Green said.
Green concedes the state can do more than it did during Wilma to help older Floridians who live on their own but still need a great deal of help, often to their own surprise, after a natural disaster.
But she cautions that many independent older residents don't get help because they don't seek it. "We have a lot of seniors who are very proud and wouldn't ask for help even if their life depended on it. So, as a result, we have to walk a very fine line," she said.
"That's the problem: Convincing them that they are vulnerable," said Edith Lederberg, executive director of the Broward County Area Agency on Aging. "The other problem is finding enough money to pay all the people who would have to be on assignment to help seniors in need."
One expert on aging in Florida who is demanding change, and more state spending to help seniors during hurricanes, is Bentley Lipscomb, the executive director of AARP Florida. He was head of the state's Department of Elder Affairs under Gov. Lawton Chiles.
Lipscomb said assistance to what he calls "the marginally independent and functioning older person," must be repaired.
"Where we have a problem," he said, "is that we don't have a handle on how to find, how to get to and how to help those great many older people who are not currently involved in getting daily assistance from a government agency."
Staff Writer Diane Lade contributed to this report.
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