Wilma Leaves Florida Elderly Vulnerable
SUNRISE, Fla. — It was a struggle for Jerry Rosokoff, 84, to make it to the front door of the third-floor apartment where he had been camped out since a hurricane swept through his retirement community.
With bad legs and kidneys, the former cemetery manager uses a cane, and walks slowly. Power had been out since the storm, and the elevator that Rosokoff depends on to leave his floor for the outside world had been immobilized for more than a week.
"I've been living on peanut butter pretty much," he said.
Worried about elderly shut-ins such as Rosokoff, Helene Zegarelli, an employee of the city of Sunrise, had come knocking, bearing a food package that included military-style meals in a pouch, grape soda, canned ravioli, potato chips and water. The retiree with the thick gray mustache thanked her, and joked that the hurricane might have had a silver lining after all.
"Maybe I'll lose a little weight," Rosokoff said.
In Florida's disaster-preparedness community, it's an axiom that each hurricane is different. Last year, Charley pulverized mobile homes near the Gulf Coast. In August, Katrina swamped Miami suburbs with heavy rain before devastating the Mississippi coast and New Orleans. When Wilma struck, the effect on Florida's elderly was especially harsh.
Wilma slashed across the state's heavily populated southern section Oct. 24. In its path lay numerous retirement communities, like the 900-unit, 25-building complex Sunrise Lakes Phase II, west of Fort Lauderdale, where Rosokoff and many other elderly of modest means live.
To care for this vulnerable group of storm victims, state and local agencies, along with nongovernmental organizations and private companies, have mounted a "massive effort," said George M. Tokesky, operations consultant with the state Department of Elder Affairs, who was sent to South Florida to act as a coordinator.
"We've been able to go out, blanket our communities and report back on their requirements, as well as meeting their needs," Tokesky said.
In advance of Wilma, for example, 26 assisted-living facilities and 15 nursing homes from Fort Myers to West Palm Beach and south to the Florida Keys transferred more than 1,500 patients to areas not at risk from the storm. State law requires such establishments to have a plan for such emergencies, and since Florida's experience last year with four hurricanes, "we've encouraged facilities to have a backup for their backup," said Jonathan Burns, spokesman for the state Agency for Health Care Administration.
