Hollywood, FL – Mayor: 5 Dead From Nursing Home That Lost Power

Hollywood, FL – Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief says five people have died from a Florida nursing home that had lost power after Hurricane Irma roared through the state.

Police and fire crews began evacuating the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills on Wednesday morning. Sharief confirmed during a news conference that three residents died at the center and two died at the hospital.

A total of 115 patients were evacuated from the nursing home, which lost power in the storm. Sanchez did not answer questions regarding whether a generator was running inside the place.

Sharief said there are no details about the cause of the deaths. No further details were immediately available.

Florida residents struggling to put their lives back together in Hurricane Irma’s wake fell victim to new hazards, including oppressive heat, brush-clearing accidents, house fires and deadly fumes from generators.

In the Miami area, a Coral Gables apartment building was evacuated after authorities determined a lack of power made it unsafe for elderly tenants, while officers arrived at the huge Century
Village retirement community in Pembroke Pines to help people on upper floors without access to
working elevators. More than half the community of 15,000 residents lacked power.

Also, at least five people died and more than a dozen were treated for breathing carbon monoxide fumes from generators in the Orlando, Miami and Daytona Beach areas.

Aside from the nursing home deaths, at least 13 people in Florida were killed in Irma-related circumstances, in some cases during the cleanup, well after the storm. A Tampa man died after the chainsaw he was using to remove branches kicked back and cut his carotid artery.

Elsewhere, Irma was blamed for four deaths in South Carolina and two in Georgia. At least 37 people were killed in the Caribbean.

In the battered Florida Keys, meanwhile, county officials pushed back against a preliminary estimate from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that 25 percent of all homes in the Keys were destroyed and nearly all the rest were heavily damaged.

“Things look real damaged from the air, but when you clear the trees and all the debris, it’s not much damage to the houses,” said Monroe County Commissioner Heather Carruthers.

The number of people without electricity in the steamy late-summer heat dropped to 9.5 million — just under half of Florida’s population. Utility officials warned it could take 10 days or more for power to be fully restored. About 110,000 people remained in shelters across the state.

Crews also worked to repair two washed-out, 300-foot (90-meter) sections of U.S. 1, the sole highway that runs through the Keys, and check the safety of the 42 bridges linking the islands.