It’s hard to see much of anything on the third floor of the Treemont Living Community in SW Houston. As you walk by, temporary lights lead your path. Deirdre McClain invited KPRC 2 to her unit to feel what residents have experienced since Hurricane Beryl knocked out power.
“My experience has been awful,” McClain said. “This is the third day that we are without electricity.”
Also on the third floor is Liz Daher’s 92-year-old dad, Sam. She called Houston firefighters to the facility to remove him from his room so he could seek treatment.
“He has congestive heart failure, so the heat has just made it worse,” Daher said. “We can’t stand to be in there, so of course he can’t stand to be in there.”
Her dad wasn’t the only one assisted by HFD. In an hour’s span, KPRC 2′s Rilwan Balogun watched as three ambulances visited the southwest community with paramedics treating residents.
“These people are all in here sweating to death,” said Brandy Demeris, who pulled her mom out of the facility. “It’s just like nothing I’ve ever seen. We live in Houston, Texas, I mean it’s like a third world country in there.”
Demeris got her mom shortly after Monday’s storm because she felt, even without power at her home, she could better attend to her mom’s needs. She returned to Treemont Wednesday to pick-up additional clothes.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Demeris said. “There’s a better way. I don’t know it but there’s a better way for sure. I can assure you, I’d be fired from my job if I handled things this way.”
There are at least 12 nursing homes in Harris County without power and at least 10 assisted living facilities operating without generators, said Greg Shelley, the senior manager at the Harris County Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program at Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth Houston.
“One of the biggest issues in this situation is the limitation on the requirement for facilities to have generators,” Shelley said. “Nursing homes are required to have generators, but they’re only required to operate a little bit of things, not necessarily, the heating and ventilation. The majority of facilities don’t have the ability to run air conditioning off their generators and that puts the older population at risk of hyperthermia because it doesn’t take much of a body temperature change to put them in great risk.”
Shelley added that nursing homes are required to power a number of items such as: alarm systems, emergency exit lighting, the nurse call systems, and in some cases telephone equipment.
“And of course, any lifesaving equipment people may need but there’s no necessary requirement of the heating and ventilation,” she said. “But there’s no requirement of the heating and ventilation so in extreme cold there’s no necessary requirement for heating unless it gets to below 20 degrees in the building and with the condition, we’re in right now, no requirement to have air conditioning. That doesn’t relieve the facility of their responsibility to make sure folks are safe.”
Shelley said if anyone is concerned about their loved one to immediately call them at 713-500-9931.
Rilwan tried speaking with a manager on duty, who was at the property, but refused to speak with him. Instead, they spoke through the receptionist who walked from the front desk to a room not far behind.
“Are they willing to come out here and talk to us at all?” Balogun asked.
“No,” was the response.
McClain, who moved in at the end of February, said communication for residents isn’t any better.
“Investment Property Services, if they are the owner of this property, and the management here some of the management here, they are not doing everything that they can to ensure that the residents are safe. This is a dangerous place to be in,” she said.