'They let people die': searching for justice after Florida's nursing home tragedy

When a care home lost power during Hurricane Irma, 14 died in the sweltering heat. Two months later, a family is demanding answers

Erika Navarro finds it hard to hold back the tears when she talks of her two grandparents who fell victim to the sweltering heat of a Florida nursing home that lost power and air conditioning after Hurricane Irma swept through in September.

Just days before his death at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, and one day before the storm hit, Navarro, 30, had a final FaceTime conversation with Miguel Franco in which she promised she was on her way home from California to celebrate his 93rd birthday.

A little less that four weeks later, Navarro joined the rest of her heartbroken family at the bedside of her 90-year-old grandmother Cecilia at a hospice in Miami, to which she had been evacuated. She died having never recovered from the ordeal of spending several days in the facility in Hollywood, Florida, with temperatures close to or above 100F (37.7C).

Next week will mark two months since the tragedy that claimed 14 lives, led to the home’s closure and sparked criminal investigations by two law enforcement agencies and inquiries by state health officials and the US Senate. Yet the family are still waiting for answers.

“It was something so simple that killed first my grandfather then my grandmother, and I’m so angry about it,” said Navarro, whose mother Margarita has launched a wrongful death lawsuit against the nursing home’s owners.

The legal filing alleges “negligence and reckless indifference” to the plight of the home’s residents by failing to evacuate them or call 911 until some began to experience acute respiratory distress. It was later determined that the body temperature of one deceased victim was 109.9F (43.2C).

“There is a hospital like not even across a big street,” Navarro said. “They could have just walked over and asked for help. It just angers me they didn’t do anything about it, they just let people die. It’s so inhumane especially from people who are caregivers. Whoever or however many must be held accountable and brought to justice because this is a homicide and we want the people responsible to pay for that.

“We also hope it opens people’s eyes to the healthcare system and that changes happen so nothing like this happens to anyone’s family ever again. [The lawsuit] is a voice for others who passed or suffered in that facility that maybe don’t have family, don’t have people fighting for them.”

Neither of the two criminal inquiries into what happened at Hollywood Hills have yet yielded any conclusions or recommendations. The Florida department of law enforcement said only that its investigation was ongoing, while the Hollywood police department did not respond to requests for comment.

The Florida agency of healthcare administration (AHCA), however, has already delivered its verdict, accusing the home’s administrators of “gross medical and criminal recklessness” and withdrawing their license to operate, a decision its owners say they are “vigorously challenging” in court.

“This facility failed its residents multiple times throughout this horrifying ordeal,” Justin Senior, the AHCA secretary, said in a statement that claimed the residents were denied timely medical care because nursing staff delayed calling for help.

“It is unfathomable that a medical professional would not know to call 911 immediately in an emergency situation.”

Senior also criticised nursing staff making “late entries” to patients’ medical records. In one episode he described as “egregious”, an entry was made “that stated the patient was resting in bed with respirations even and unlabored, however, this resident had already died before this entry was made.”

Lawyers for the home said in a written statement that staff did everything they could and that repeated calls were made to the utility company Florida Power and Light highlighting the urgent need for air conditioning to be restored.

“Caregivers continuously monitored their residents, offered them hydration, and implemented efforts to keep the facility temperatures as comfortable as possible during what was an emergency situation in the midst of a statewide hurricane disaster,” attorneys Julie Allison and Kirsten Ullman wrote.

The AHCA’s findings, they said, “simply do not describe the actual environment that existed. There was no indication, based on actual environment conditions and Hollywood Hills’ well-founded belief that its air conditioning power was being prioritized for restoration, to cause a belief that subjecting residents to the trauma of evacuation was necessary.”

Additionally, they said, medical notes were documented late because of the emergency circumstances beyond caregivers’ control, and that attending the residents was their priority.

Navarro, meanwhile, said her family was still struggling to come to terms with what happened. “It’s particularly hard on my mom and her siblings who lost both their parents,” she said.

“To think my grandfather was left to die by himself with nobody around him, no family, no one to hold his hand, no one to tell him ‘go in peace, we’re with you’, it’s like a nightmare. It hurts that we couldn’t be there for him. His last words to me are now forever in my head, ‘just hurry up and get here.’ It was like he was waiting for me to get there, to see me, to hug me. The only thing that brings me a little bit of peace to get through this is I know I gave him all the love that I could.”