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Assisted living homes make it happen after the storm
  
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By RYAN HICKMAN
Glen Bradford had packed his bags Sept. 10, two days before Hurricane Ike blasted Houston and Atascocita and the Rosemont Assisted Living Home where he is the executive director.
He expects in his line of work, caring for about 110 local residents, that a hurricane will keep him away from home for a few days. But even Bradford, who has been in the health care business, could not have had the foresight that Rosemont on Kings Park Way would have only its essential services powered on a generator for more than 300 straight hours after the storm.
“After five and half days of working straight, we thought the power was going to have to come on,” Bradford said. Instead, they went seven more days with only the emergency lighting, elevator service, the nurses’ emergency call system, a freezer, refrigerator and the ice machine, which was all the items the generator could power.
“The big thing is the residents don’t have air conditioning,” he said about his residents whose average age is 85.
The most the building had gone without power was 26 hours, Bradford explained.
“This was more than 100 times that.”
Bradford’s days and nights for nearly two weeks with minimal power was just one of the many hardships and triumphs that local assisted living homes had to endure before, during and after the storm while caring for area folks who are in need of around-the-clock care.
As the week without power at Rosemont continued even longer, Bradford said he was on the phone with CenterPoint Energy three times a day as each day brought more irritation.
“It is frustrating for us because the mall was up and the drive-through for Burger King was up and here we are an assisted living home,” Bradford, who explained that Rosemont’s CenterPoint Energy bill is between $1,400 to $1,800 a month, said. “That was a little hard for me to understand.”
Bob Roy, the Humble/Greenspoint service area director for CenterPoint Energy, said that assisted living homes are on the priority list but not as high as hospitals or police stations because most patients in the hospital are in critical care situations.
He stressed that preparedness is key for assisted living complexes.
“There should be some plans on some business owners’ parts if they can’t deal with the outage, especially when you’re dealing with an assisted living home,” Roy said. “If they called and their generator went out, we’d do everything we could to get to them.”
Even though Rosemont had an emergency plan, which has to be checked off on by both the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Aging and Disabilities Services, the staff never really knows how it will stand up until they have to implement it.
“You lay these plans out hoping you’ll never have to use them but when the lights go out, everything you planned for better work,” Bradford said. “We’re just darn lucky our back-up equipment didn’t go out.”
There were a few close calls, however, for a generator that had to be refilled with diesel fuel every 40 hours.
At one point, throughout the nearly 12 days without electricity service, Bradford said they were close to running out of gas.
“We were within two hours of having this building go black.”
And as challenging as refilling the generator was, Bradford had to keep his staff inside fresh and recharged after literally working around the clock while other staff tried to get to the building.
Almost all of the residents at Rosemont, and even some of their families, stayed in the steel frame building during and after the storm.
That wasn’t the situation, though, for the Atria Assisted Living facility on Green Oak Drive in Kingwood.
The staff and 40 or so residents, as well as some of their family members, picked up and left for a Sheraton hotel in Dallas on Thursday, Sept. 11, to set up a remote assisted living home.
“We had two coach buses that took us as well as our own Atria shuttle bus,” Anne Fletcher, the executive director at Atria in Kingwood, explained.
In about a day, Atria Kingwood had set up shop on one hotel floor.
“We set up an Atria assisted living community in a hotel within 24 hours,” Fletcher said. “We took over one floor and we had a med room and another room as an activity room and everyone stayed with everyone.
“It was just like an Atria community back at home.”
During the 12 days the residents were in Dallas they even made a trip to the art museum.
Atria’s caravan move to Dallas, which included all medication as well as all files and documents from the home, was part of a larger plan that started to take shape earlier in the week that Ike hit.“We have a whole protocol process and each of our managers have that in their cars,” Fletcher said. Once the decision was made to leave to Dallas, Atria had to only wait on the charter buses, which were being snatched up throughout the region as the storm loomed.
Fletcher said that staying in Kingwood isn’t an option for Atria because they’re not equipped to handle a hurricane.
“We don’t have a backup generator so there is no way of chancing that,” she said.
As a full-service assisted living home, Atria provides three meals a day, but the staff at the Sheraton picked up that duty while they were in Dallas.
“The Sheraton cooked the meals three times a day and then another seating for the families,” Fletcher said.
At Rosemont during the same time, the facility also didn’t miss a meal, but had the staff hunkered down to make it happen.
“The entire kitchen crew stayed here and lived on site for the first five days,” Bradford explained.
Before the storm, Bradford and his staff brought essentials - food, soft drinks, juices, paper plates - to feed 200 people for seven days.
“If either the refrigerator or freezer would have failed, we would have lost tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of groceries,” he said. “Thankfully everything worked.”
Food at Kingwood Senior Village didn’t fare as well when they lost power.
Their residents have a more independent, apartment-style set-up than Atria or Rosemont so when the generator they had to power the facility only charged up some parts of the complex, mainly the refrigerator and air conditioning in their club room, perishable food started to go with residents gone.
By Monday, Sept. 15, food in the refrigerators in the rooms of the 155 residents was going bad and the staff took two days to bag up the spoiled food. But the elevators were not working, so the staff had to slide big black garbage bags down makeshift plastic sheeting slides to Dumpsters below from three of the complex’s four floors.
According to Judy Brown, Kingwood Senior Village’s marketing and activities director, a problem arose for residents who came back to the low-income, over 55 community that relies heavily on assistance.
“People were returning without food and people were returning with no money until Social Security comes in,” Brown said.
But residents received a lot of support from local organizations.
Kingwood First Baptist Church provided $25 gift cards from Wal-Mart to residents of Kingwood Senior Village. The residents also took the bus to Humble Area Assistance Ministries to pick up boxes of non-perishable food. The Society of St. Stephen in Kingwood then took residents to Kroger and gave them each another $25 and more from the store.
And the help came in a hurry.
“It was within a two-hour space from the time I asked (Society of St. Stephen) to the time people had food in their hands,” Brown said.
He expects in his line of work, caring for about 110 local residents, that a hurricane will keep him away from home for a few days. But even Bradford, who has been in the health care business, could not have had the foresight that Rosemont on Kings Park Way would have only its essential services powered on a generator for more than 300 straight hours after the storm.
“After five and half days of working straight, we thought the power was going to have to come on,” Bradford said. Instead, they went seven more days with only the emergency lighting, elevator service, the nurses’ emergency call system, a freezer, refrigerator and the ice machine, which was all the items the generator could power.
“The big thing is the residents don’t have air conditioning,” he said about his residents whose average age is 85.
The most the building had gone without power was 26 hours, Bradford explained.
“This was more than 100 times that.”
Bradford’s days and nights for nearly two weeks with minimal power was just one of the many hardships and triumphs that local assisted living homes had to endure before, during and after the storm while caring for area folks who are in need of around-the-clock care.
As the week without power at Rosemont continued even longer, Bradford said he was on the phone with CenterPoint Energy three times a day as each day brought more irritation.
“It is frustrating for us because the mall was up and the drive-through for Burger King was up and here we are an assisted living home,” Bradford, who explained that Rosemont’s CenterPoint Energy bill is between $1,400 to $1,800 a month, said. “That was a little hard for me to understand.”
Bob Roy, the Humble/Greenspoint service area director for CenterPoint Energy, said that assisted living homes are on the priority list but not as high as hospitals or police stations because most patients in the hospital are in critical care situations.
He stressed that preparedness is key for assisted living complexes.
“There should be some plans on some business owners’ parts if they can’t deal with the outage, especially when you’re dealing with an assisted living home,” Roy said. “If they called and their generator went out, we’d do everything we could to get to them.”
Even though Rosemont had an emergency plan, which has to be checked off on by both the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Aging and Disabilities Services, the staff never really knows how it will stand up until they have to implement it.
“You lay these plans out hoping you’ll never have to use them but when the lights go out, everything you planned for better work,” Bradford said. “We’re just darn lucky our back-up equipment didn’t go out.”
There were a few close calls, however, for a generator that had to be refilled with diesel fuel every 40 hours.
At one point, throughout the nearly 12 days without electricity service, Bradford said they were close to running out of gas.
“We were within two hours of having this building go black.”
And as challenging as refilling the generator was, Bradford had to keep his staff inside fresh and recharged after literally working around the clock while other staff tried to get to the building.
Almost all of the residents at Rosemont, and even some of their families, stayed in the steel frame building during and after the storm.
That wasn’t the situation, though, for the Atria Assisted Living facility on Green Oak Drive in Kingwood.
The staff and 40 or so residents, as well as some of their family members, picked up and left for a Sheraton hotel in Dallas on Thursday, Sept. 11, to set up a remote assisted living home.
“We had two coach buses that took us as well as our own Atria shuttle bus,” Anne Fletcher, the executive director at Atria in Kingwood, explained.
In about a day, Atria Kingwood had set up shop on one hotel floor.
“We set up an Atria assisted living community in a hotel within 24 hours,” Fletcher said. “We took over one floor and we had a med room and another room as an activity room and everyone stayed with everyone.
“It was just like an Atria community back at home.”
During the 12 days the residents were in Dallas they even made a trip to the art museum.
Atria’s caravan move to Dallas, which included all medication as well as all files and documents from the home, was part of a larger plan that started to take shape earlier in the week that Ike hit.“We have a whole protocol process and each of our managers have that in their cars,” Fletcher said. Once the decision was made to leave to Dallas, Atria had to only wait on the charter buses, which were being snatched up throughout the region as the storm loomed.
Fletcher said that staying in Kingwood isn’t an option for Atria because they’re not equipped to handle a hurricane.
“We don’t have a backup generator so there is no way of chancing that,” she said.
As a full-service assisted living home, Atria provides three meals a day, but the staff at the Sheraton picked up that duty while they were in Dallas.
“The Sheraton cooked the meals three times a day and then another seating for the families,” Fletcher said.
At Rosemont during the same time, the facility also didn’t miss a meal, but had the staff hunkered down to make it happen.
“The entire kitchen crew stayed here and lived on site for the first five days,” Bradford explained.
Before the storm, Bradford and his staff brought essentials - food, soft drinks, juices, paper plates - to feed 200 people for seven days.
“If either the refrigerator or freezer would have failed, we would have lost tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of groceries,” he said. “Thankfully everything worked.”
Food at Kingwood Senior Village didn’t fare as well when they lost power.
Their residents have a more independent, apartment-style set-up than Atria or Rosemont so when the generator they had to power the facility only charged up some parts of the complex, mainly the refrigerator and air conditioning in their club room, perishable food started to go with residents gone.
By Monday, Sept. 15, food in the refrigerators in the rooms of the 155 residents was going bad and the staff took two days to bag up the spoiled food. But the elevators were not working, so the staff had to slide big black garbage bags down makeshift plastic sheeting slides to Dumpsters below from three of the complex’s four floors.
According to Judy Brown, Kingwood Senior Village’s marketing and activities director, a problem arose for residents who came back to the low-income, over 55 community that relies heavily on assistance.
“People were returning without food and people were returning with no money until Social Security comes in,” Brown said.
But residents received a lot of support from local organizations.
Kingwood First Baptist Church provided $25 gift cards from Wal-Mart to residents of Kingwood Senior Village. The residents also took the bus to Humble Area Assistance Ministries to pick up boxes of non-perishable food. The Society of St. Stephen in Kingwood then took residents to Kroger and gave them each another $25 and more from the store.
And the help came in a hurry.
“It was within a two-hour space from the time I asked (Society of St. Stephen) to the time people had food in their hands,” Brown said.
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