8 Die After Power Fails at Care Center in Florida

According to the article “8 Die After Power Fails at Care Center in Florida” by Neil Reisner, Sheri Fink and Vivian Yee, 8 people died in Hollywood, Fla. in a nursing home this past Wednesday. Everything points that this event occurred because of high temperature and no air-conditioning. This article shows that “after Hurricane Irma”, many places have gone through electricity problem. The nursing home did not have electricity problem however the air-conditioning power system was badly damaged. All the patients have been evacuated and this heartbreaking event is still under investigation. The governor Rick Scott blames the nursing home. The nursing home blames Florida Power & Light, and FPL blames the Broward County Officials for not considering nursing home as one of the most urgent places to be assisted is case of hurricanes.   

I cannot fathom why this type of events occur when they can be stopped. The governor Scott says that the nursing home was responsible for the security of its patients (Reisner et al. A11). I think Mr. Scott is right because the nursing home administrator Jorge Carballo should make the decision of evacuating the patients since Monday when they find out that the air-conditioning had problem. They should not wait for FPL to fix the problem. I think that they did not need to be so smart to understand that high temperatures can make people die, especially if they have health difficulty like most of the people in the nursing homes. The nursing home’s staffs could not pretend that some “mobile cooling units and fans” were going to be enough to keep a safe temperature in the building. Since the beginning they should know that they were risking patients’ life. Mr. Scott says that “the state health officials had told the home’s administrators to call 911 if they believed patients’ health was at risk” (Reisner et al. A11). Nonetheless, no one call 911. On Tuesday morning, they reported that the air-conditioning was off, but they did not evacuate the patients or make a smart plan to keep them safe and that was their mistake. People from light companies are never on time. They always have a lot of things going on, especially after a hurricane.

I feel so sad for this tragedy. It should not happen. However, people never learn to take precaution. This type of mistake is incomprehensible.

    

   Work Cited

Reisner, Neil, et al. “8 Die After Power Fails at Care Center in Florida.” The New York Times, 14 September 2017, late ed., p. A1, A11.