Shocking news! At least 8 dead after Irma leaves Florida nursing home with no A/C

Police are investigating the deaths of eight nursing home residents in Hollywood, Florida, where oppressive heat and humidity set in after Hurricane Irma knocked out much of the power in the area.

The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills said the residents, ages 71 to 99, died "following a prolonged outage of our air conditioning system due to Hurricane Irma." 

 

 

The center did not lose power during the storm, but it lost a transformer that powers the air conditioning, nursing home administrator Jorge Carballo said in a statement late Wednesday. He added that the center immediately contacted Florida Power & Light and continued to follow up with them for status updates on when repairs would be made. Outreach was made to local emergency officials and first responders, Carballo said, without specifying when.

"Staff set up mobile cooling units and fans to cool the facility and continually checked on our residents' well-being to ensure they were hydrated," Carballo said. "We are devastated by these losses. We are fully cooperating with all authorities and regulators to assess what went wrong and to ensure our other residents are cared for."