Nursing Homes Weren't Ready For A Pandemic. They're Not Ready For Wildfire, Either

Speaker 1: 00:00 A number of wildfires are currently burning in California. This week. We're exploring how assisted living facilities are preparing for emergencies in a special series from our colleagues at KQBD called older and overlooked. The investigation found that across the state 37% of these facilities are located in areas at heightened risk for wildfire. It's a little higher in San Diego County at 41%, but in Nevada County, 100% of facilities are at risk KQ, ETS health correspondent, April. Demboski traveled to grass Valley in Nevada County before COVID-19 to see how assisted living facilities for the elderly are preparing for wildfire season. April tells us a new law aimed at helping these facilities prepare for disaster is falling short, Speaker 2: 00:56 Continue on California, 49 South for nine miles. Speaker 1: 01:00 Randy dinning spends most of his work week in his black Honda fit. He's a longterm care ombudsman for the state department of aging, which means he drops in at residential facilities for the elderly to check on the quality of the food or the care. But on this shift for the first time he's asking about disaster preparedness, Speaker 2: 01:21 Alrighty, off we go. Speaker 1: 01:23 First stop of the day is Sierra view manner. This is assisted living as opposed to skilled nursing, which is overseen by the state department of public health assisted living is nonmedical. It's overseen by the state department of social services. So overall the rules here are weaker, but Randy, isn't the enforcer as an ombudsman, he's more the tattletale to the enforcers straight away. He has to talk to the boss. Speaker 2: 01:47 The boss, ladies around Speaker 1: 01:49 Administrator of Vanessa Lely, tennies comes out and as Randy tries to ease into questions about disaster planning, she interrupts to say, we are the best. Speaker 2: 01:58 Well, I'm going to brag right from the beginning. Speaker 1: 02:00 And she begins listing the virtues of her generator, cover the entire buildings and in their evacuation plan within seven minutes and the go bags, they prep for each resident. Speaker 2: 02:10 Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. We do those redo evacuation drills. Oh yeah. I have often, probably every quarter, every quarter, Speaker 1: 02:19 But the conversation gets awkward when Vanessa reveals, they only have one employee on staff overnight caring for 46 residents. If wildfire strikes, she says the folks at the skilled nursing facility next door, we'll take them in Speaker 2: 02:34 And they have 46 beds over there. No, Speaker 1: 02:40 She says maybe they'd take them to the local high school, but we're never going to happen. Speaker 2: 02:43 Have one of those kinds of emergencies I insist, Speaker 1: 02:49 But that's exactly what happened nearly three years ago in Santa Rosa, when wildfire swept through in the middle of the night, two assisted living facilities had only a handful of staff and they left about a hundred elderly residents behind for relatives and police to rescue one facility burned down as did eight others across the state that year, that was a real eye opener for us. And that staff weren't trained Pandic FOSS is the enforcer. She oversees licensing for assisted living facilities for the department of social services. She says the new law that took effect last year was a direct response to what happened in Santa Rosa. These fires identified the need for the entire area to be evacuated. Instead of being prepared to escape a kitchen fire as the older law outlined facilities now need to have options of where they'll go to shelter locations for how they're going to get their plan for transportation and who will be responsible for what this bill really strengthened the requirements in an emergency plan. Speaker 1: 03:53 But state data indicates the department is reluctant to enforce them in 2018 state inspector cited, just 62 facilities for having an insufficient disaster plan. Last year, when the law took effect, they cited 239, but that's still just 3% out of nearly 7,600 facilities across the state. Dick VA says inspectors, see themselves more as consultants rather than disciplinarians. It's really a collaborative effort across the state between the providers, between the advocates and the department, but that's not how some advocates for the elderly see the department. It's a provider protection agency, not a consumer protection agency. Chris Murphy runs an advocacy group dedicated to assisted living reform. She and her colleagues have been asking regulators for better evacuation plans and training for a decade. They will rarely come down on the side of the consumer. She says the new law was written by the assisted living industry and doesn't do nearly enough to protect residents. For example, it requires portable evacuation chairs. At the top of every stairwell, the facilities are still required to have just one employee on duty overnight for every 99 residents. I don't care how many little evacuation chairs you have. If you have one person trying to do that, nobody's giving out Murphy says the law also fails to acknowledge how complex resident's health status has gotten. Two decades ago. Assisted living was meant for people who needed a little bit of help. Now more and more are bedridden or have dementia Speaker 1: 05:33 At the cascades of grass Valley assisted living facility. 90% of the residents have some form of dementia. Speaker 3: 05:40 Ms. Betty, hi Speaker 1: 05:43 Administrator, petsy Pittman. Rest her hand on the shoulder of a resident sitting by herself at the kitchen table. Are you ready for lunch for lunch? I thought I was here for breakfast. Research shows that people with dementia are more likely to die after a disaster, but the new law is silent on how to prepare this population. Fire drills. Aren't really an option loud sounds and changes in routine, but people with dementia at risk for wandering off, we don't want to overstimulate them. We don't want to make them anxious for advice on this Pepsi confers with other facilities in town like atria assisted living down the road. When a brush fire broke out next to Atrius building last fall and they had to evacuate 110 people. Staff told the dementia residents, they were going on field trip. You act like it's just another day and we're going for a bus ride. Speaker 1: 06:34 Vice president, Andrew Levine says they took everyone to the crown Plaza hotel in Sacramento. Their teams got to work, making the room safe for people with dementia. When we take out all the coffee machines, we take out the iron, the soaps, why the soaps, uh, because we don't want them to eat it. You know, we take out everything that potentially could be harmful on safety staff went about recreating life at atria at the hotel games, karaoke dancing. Yeah, it was a little mini vacation. It was fun. I think I won three bingo games, Betty Johnson and bud Paul are both 94, three days later when they came back to grass Valley staff were in the driveway, shaking Palm palms and pouring champagne, greeting us all lined up, welcome home. And you really felt it. But all these efforts were possible because atria has a corporate office that can mobilize teams of people. Most facilities are smaller and can't afford that. And together the industry lobbies to keep these kinds of best practices as recommendations rather than law I'm April Demboski KQBD news. Speaker 4: 07:51 [inaudible].