Fla. nursing home where 8 died after Irma defends actions, says it called governor

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The night before Hurricane Irma began roaring over Florida, staffers at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills locked the doors, shuttered the windows and turned the temperature down to about 67 degrees — a buffer, administrators thought, to keep the building cool in case the power went out.

It wouldn't last long. At about 3 p.m. on Sunday, the lights flickered, nursing-home executives say. The power stayed on, but a janitor soon noticed a problem: The massive chiller used to serve the 152-bed facility was spewing warm, muggy air.

The following evening, Natasha Anderson, one of the executives, called a private phone number for Gov. Rick Scott (R) seeking urgent help, Anderson said. It was the first of three such calls, she said.

"Repeatedly, I was told that our case was being escalated to the highest level," Anderson said.

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Yet, she said, no one came — and nursing-home officials did not consider the crisis urgent enough to bring patients to the hospital across the road.

By noon Wednesday, eight residents were dead. Their deaths are being investigated as criminal homicides, and the nursing home has been closed.

The account the nursing-home executives provided to The Post offers new details of the deteriorating conditions inside the facility. But it also is contradicted by law enforcement and state officials on key points, including how aggressively the nursing home had sought assistance and precisely when staffers called 911 as a patient went into cardiac arrest.

Attempts to assign blame abound.

The Florida Department of Health said that "at no time" did the nursing home "report that conditions had become dangerous or that the health and safety of their patients was at risk."

"It's shocking that these trained medical professionals put patients' lives in needless jeopardy. The fact is that this facility never called 911," said Mara Gambineri, a spokeswoman for the department. "The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills is responsible for the health and safety of their patients."

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