When “Emergencies” Last for Months — and the Impact on Seniors
Over the last several weeks, I’ve been in an ongoing conversation with a good friend who operates a court-appointed special advocate program and guardianship agency in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. I’ve visited her several times over the years, and in fact, was just there in May. We talked then about whether she would evacuate in the event of any predicted hurricane strike on her island. Her answer was “probably not,” in large part because of her commitment to sharing the workload for a community already under stress from lack of jobs and other financial pressures.
She rode out the two hurricanes that hit her part of the Caribbean in September and while her own home was spared serious damage, she could provide only sporadic reports — when she had cell phone service and enough battery power — about the aftermath for her clients. When she mentioned the trauma caused by the “simple” fact that having no way to escape heat and humidity, especially at night, was one of the most exhausting parts of the post-storm struggle for all ages, I searched my local stories for battery operated fans to send (and then we had the challenge of finding a way to get them to her island).
The reality for seniors living day-after-day, week-after-week, and now several months in a row without a reliable source of power is part of the picture painted in a recent article in The New York Times.
With large areas of Puerto Rico still in the dark three months after the first of the storms — according to government reports, only 60.4 percent of the pre-storm power grid load has been restored — older residents and those with chronic medical conditions are suffering in even more ways than their neighbors. Many nursing homes have no power. The failure to re-establish functioning telephone networks and transportation systems in many areas makes it difficult to get regular medical care. Fire safety systems are inoperable, posing special dangers for those who cannot easily escape.
A look inside the 356 units that make up Puerto Rico’s largest housing project for low-income seniors, Comunidad del Retiro, or Retirement Community, helps explain the hurricanes’ continuing impact on the vulnerable. Inside the complex, there is a man with apnea who cannot sleep at night without power to his oxygen machine. A woman with dementia who was scheduled for transfer to a nursing home before the storm. And Ms. Rodriguez de Jesus, who mistakenly drank a poison in the dark and came close to becoming another uncounted hurricane death.
There have been falls in dimly lit apartments. Special diets that could no longer be followed. Medical interventions, drugs and treatments missed or delayed…..
For more, read Lives at Risk Inside a Senior Complex in Puerto Rico With No Power.