@emilybee I commented in response to your post about nothing being able to start prior to receiving an insurance company check. That was not the case for ANYone I know who sustained damage in Matthew, regardless of their financial situation. Don’t assume that everyone I know in HH is someone of means. No one I knew, who had insurance, had to wait to receive a check. That was my point.
@sevmom I understand the issue with those who have renters’ insurance but it’s an entirely different situation because renters’ insurance only covers contents and there are specified perils. It would depend on what named perils those individuals chose to have covered.
My mother is in a nursing home in CT and when we had a freak snowstorm in Oct 2011, I couldn’t even get out of my house let alone check on my mother 15 minutes away. We had no power at home for a week. If I remember correctly, the nursing home may have called family members to say they had generators and the residents were safe. Unlike in FL, they were priority to restore power and got it back in 24 hours. Had it been different, the most I could’ve done is check on what was going on by phone. Even if I had power and the nursing home didn’t, I couldn’t have brought my mother to my house. She’s in a nursing home for a reason.
I have family in FL. Her daughter’s boss spoke to her insurance company before the storm and said it wasn’t clear whether or not they’d pay or what they’d pay for and what they wouldn’t. There seems to be a difference between water damage, wind damage, and flooding, even though all are generated by the same hurricane, and one may be covered but the others might not be. She’s a small business owner and if there was a catastrophic loss to inventory as well as extensive structural damage she couldn’t afford to reopen if one was covered but the other wasn’t.
I wouldn’t dare hire a contractor under those conditions. My husband is in the trades, and I’ve never known him to start a job without a down payment. Somebody has to pay for materials. He wouldn’t be able to afford the risk of getting payment from an insurance company. The customer would have to deal with that separately.
If it was as simple as having a problem and hiring someone to fix it, then someone pays, Katrina’s victims wouldn’t have suffered so very long. And the Sandy stories.
This is the sort of situation where we may need to step back from individual anecdotes and look at the broader picture.
^Correct that the insurance company differentiates different kinds of damage. My husband inspected many, many houses damaged in Hurricane Sandy. It was his job to report on the damage caused by wind and water, by percentage. “0% wind; 100% water.” “30% wind; 70% water.” Then it depended on the homeowner’s policy as to what the insurance company would pay for.
He also had to determine what damage was pre-existing. Some dishonest people claimed that damage was due to the hurricane when he could tell it had occurred beforehand.
He was paid by an engineering firm, so he was an independent observer. If there was any question at all, he would write his report in favor of the homeowner, not the insurance company.
Galveston tried mightily hard at not rebuilding Section 8 housing. The Feds screwed them so far into the wall they acquiesced.
When the Feds won’t allow a population to migrate to higher ground, one the taxpayers might not have to reimburse for yet again in 10 or so years, the issue is complicated. To put it put it mildly.
(Thoughts after reading the NYT op ed link above and considering a few posts regarding the wisdom of living on the Gulf coast.)
The Holiday nursing home with deaths is under investigation. There have been past problems with it and the hospital across the street below average grade-substandard per our newspaper.
People with marginal health, housing, incomes are usually the ones to suffer the most.
Jose will not be a problem. The as yet unnamed weather coming from Africa hopefully will not be an issue for Florida. Cape Cod was mentioned- be aware in a couple of weeks, folks. September and October are the two most active hurricane months- the season ends the end of November (begins June 1st).
Went to my usual stores today- in least affected part of town. Asked a couple of strangers how they fared- “only a day” without power heard more than once. We were so lucky to have no loss. Saw a bunch of power company trucks with an Oklahoma logo in the big Walmart parking lot and a group of four men in the store who looked like the could be workers- yup, they spent two days getting here to help. A lot of progress is being made daily, most will have power by Sunday I heard. Many store shelves empty, especially at Target. I suspect supply chains determine who has what. Seeing all of those empty shelves reminded me of how much people stocked up and a glimpse at what third world conditions are like. We are so used to full shelves all of the time with so many products.
When (not if) the next one threatens we will be going on vacation for a couple of weeks- road trip to the Midwest folks!
Neighbors got one of the first flights home from Puerto Rico and back to work. Still no power there for awhile. Hard to believe this time one week ago was the before but with shortages and closures already happening.
Seems to me the nursing home was understaffed and the workers were undertrained to the point of criminal negligence. OK, the second floor was 110 degrees, and that is too hot for seniors. So why were the residents not moved to the first floor? Why were they not taken to the hospital across the street? Why did the nursing home staff repeatedly tell hospital people that everything was under control, when it wasn’t?
Not quite – the rehab center/nursing home has long been known as a below average facility but the hospital across the street (no affiliation with the nursing home) is one of the best in the area.
I can’t speak to the staffing of that nursing home, but I spent the storm weekend with my 95-year-old mother at her independent living facility about 1/2 mile away from that hospital. It has an assisted living wing that had a generator when power was lost but it didn’t power the A/C, only some lights and outlets for oxygen and other medical necessities. The independent living side has two wings. Mom’s side got power back on Monday evening and the other wing got it 24 hours later. The heat was really unbearable and if we had had to endure another day of it I would have had to take her over to the hospital myself.
There was a skeleton staff on hand throughout the weekend, meals were provided but were basically canned things heated on propane stoves. There were no emergency lights in most of the hallways and none at all in the stairways. Mom lives on the top (4th) floor so it was scary for me trying to get to the lobby with just a flashlight. There’s no way they could have evacuated everyone without elevators if they had needed to. But there’s no requirement to provide power or services to the independent living wings – those folks are just renters who have meals and activities provided, but a lot of them really should be in assisted, I feel. The administrator had promised that backup generators would be delivered within a few hours after the storm had passed that would power one elevator on each wing, some lighting and some outlets. Those generators never came.
If we have another storm this season, I’m not letting her stay there again. My home is in an evacuation zone so she can’t stay here, either. We’ll have to go north.
As to short staffing, the nursing homes (and hospitals) can’t help it if their staff refuses to come in. My nursing forum was full of threads with nurses and CNAs posting that they didn’t want to go in during the hurricane. While some nurses encouraged them to go in as they know that first responders and health care workers are essential and they knew this when they moved to Florida and sought employment at 24/7 facilities, most told them to put themselves first and do what they felt was best for themselves.
As Maria and Lee approach and threaten the poor folks of the Lesser Antilles, St John has kicked into gear trying to get all non-essential personnel to evacuate the island. Maria is predicted to build up to hurricane status and either hit St. Croix directly, according to current models, or go over St. Thomas and St. John. St. Croix had been largely spared by Irma and many of the St. John residents were aided by relief from St. Croix residents and housed on the larger island. (Also, the St. Croix police chief took over security for St. John). Given Maria’s predicted path and intensity, with Lee on its tail, St. Johnians are being asked to evacuate to Puerto Rico instead of St. Croix.
These poor people of the USVI, BVI and other islands in the area!
Just today I booked a fight to get my mom back home to her assisted living community in FL because we were told they now had water and power but now we are thinking of keeping her here in TX until we know where these new storms will go.
On the NOAA map, I think they are saying that Lee may dissipate. At least they symbols go from S, for tropical storm, to D, for tropical depression. At least I hope it does.
Maria goes from S to H (hurricane) to M (major hurricane). So sorry for what this is going to do to the islands.
I heard an interview with a young woman who was very sad at some of the hurricane coverage. She’s a native of the US VI and she hated hearing that Irma had “made landfall in the US” in Florida, when more accurately it had already happened in the US VI.
This is the 100 year anniversary of the US VI. We bought the islands from Denmark 1917, wanting more of a presence in the Caribbean.
My friend went to be with her mother in a hospice. They moved them to a hallway in a nursing home, which lost power and A/C, then generators went out, oxygen tanks being shared by 8 people, hot. One woman did die the first night, but friend said it wasn’t from lack of power or care, it was just her day to die. I’m sure moving her didn’t help.
I can’t imagine the heat, the worry, the dealing with all those patients. My friend was able to be there to help her mother (not medically, just to be able to help her into a chair), but there is no way that nursing homes can be staffed for 3-4 days and have everything be normal. I give credit to the staff that could stay, but many of them I’m sure had their own families to worry about, to tray to care for, maybe even an elderly relative. My friend was fortunate that her husband could stay and take care of their home, boat, children (adults) and grandchildren, and she could go be with her mother. When she first headed to her mother, the storm was expected to hit Miami and her home in Jupiter, and she thought she’d just be holding her mother’s hand through a stormy night. Turned out to be a lot worse near her mother’s hospice than she’d imagined.
My daughter was at her college and didn’t know which way to run, as the storm predictions kept changing. Turns out one of the areas least damaged was her college town, but no one knew that the time.
Yes, this! ^ So frustrating. I read news stories about tourists stuck on the island during the hurricane entitled something like “Americans evacuated from St. John or St. Thomas”. They’re all Americans!
I feel badly for all the ALFs and SNFs. It took a week for my neighborhood to get power. Generators didn’t last the week. No one could find fuel. Ice cannot be found.