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WOOD Radio Local News

WOOD Radio Local News

 

911 calls on nursing home dying: ‘Oh my God, this is crazy’

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — At first there was no hint of distress in the 911 calls, no sense of a crisis unfolding. But newly released emergency calls from a sweltering Florida nursing home that lost its air conditioning to Hurricane Irma showed staffers becoming increasingly agitated by a disaster that would eventually claim 14 elderly lives.

The six calls made from the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills between 3 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 13, the day the first eight patients died, show that several patients were in respiratory distress and at least two were in cardiac arrest. By the second call, an employee is heard muttering “Whatta night.” On the fourth call, another tells someone, “Oh my God, this is crazy.”

But it wasn’t until the final call did one of the 911 dispatchers realize that the sick patient wasn’t an individual event but part of a series. The dispatcher, seeing the earlier calls on his computer screen, questioned if this was the same patient. No, the unidentified employee replied, a different one.

The dispatcher then asks if additional paramedics are needed.

“You guys already have a few other paramedics here, so I’m not sure,” the employee responds.

Full Story: AP News


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