State Regulators Seek to Revoke Licenses of California Facilities for Failures During Fire Emergency Response
Flying into California for Labor Day weekend was a vivid reminder for me as an East Coast resident of the devastation being wrought by wildfires on the West Coast.
News articles also call attention to the need for careful advance planning and training by senior care communities — however labeled or regulated, and wherever located — for emergencies such as fires. Reading recent articles also demonstrates that just because you are in a “high-end” facility, administrators may not have a functional plan.
As detailed in a written complaint filed the first week of September 2018, California regulators are seeking to revoke the licenses of two Santa Rosa facilities operated under the umbrella of Oakmont Senior Living endangered by wildfires on October 8-9, 2017. The complaint also seeks lifetime bans for individual administrators. While there were no deaths of residents or staff at either location, one location, Villa Capri, was completely destroyed in the fire.
The state’s complaint alleges inadequate staffing to handle nighttime evacuations, plus failure to comply with emergency and evacuation procedures, either because of inadequate knowledge or training on the plans for the administrators and staff that were present. The complaint describes a bus that could have been used to facilitate evacuation, but the on-duty staff did not have keys. It is alleged that because of these failures, “no staff were at Villa Capri to assist with the evacuation of more than 20 remaining elderly and infirm facility residents.” Family members of the residents and emergency responders conducted the remaining evacuations at both locations.
The facilities, described in news articles by various labels ranging from “nursing homes” (the label used in the first line of a New York Times article) to “luxury retirement communities” (as described in the Mercury News), were licensed under California law as “residential care facilities for the elderly.” As such, they were subject to regulations requiring appropriate emergency plans, including evacuation plans. It appears that Villa Capri had 62 units devoted to “memory (dementia) care” and assisted living. The second community, Varenna at Fountaingrove, is reported to have had 228 residents, including many who lived in individual “casitas,” and 14 residents who needed “care and supervision” or “hospice.”
The state’s suit comes a few days after news of a reported settlement of a civil suit for undisclosed terms, filed on behalf of 17 residents of Villa Capri.