Nursing Home Fire Safety
I ran across an article about fire safety in nursing homes (from USA Today via Fire Engineering).
Fires in nursing homes are relatively common -- about 2,300 are reported each year, roughly one fire for every seven facilities. Yet, guides on how to choose a nursing home, published by consumer and industry groups, often fail to suggest checking a facility's fire safeguards.The federal agency that regulates nursing homes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also does little to help consumers when it comes to fire safety. The CMS Nursing Home Compare website lists all citations a facility gets for deficiencies in patient care. But it fails to list fire safety violations or show which facilities have sprinklers and other basic protections.
What jumped out at me was the stat that there is one fire for every seven nursing homes! That is unacceptable. Especially, in a building where there are a lot of residents and evacuating them is difficult.
I also found a related article at USA Today.
More than half the nation's 16,000 nursing homes violate federal fire safety standards each year, and government regulations let thousands of older facilities operate without the sprinklers or smoke alarms often required in buildings used by the public.When inspectors do come across fire safety violations, they rarely impose fines or other penalties that might prompt a home to fix its problems, a USA TODAY investigation shows. Four of every five nursing homes that have had fatal fires over the past five years had gotten waivers from regulators that allowed them to keep doing business despite fire safety deficiencies.
Not only is there a fire safety problem in our nursing homes, but inspectors let them off the hook when a violation is found. Until our state governments and inspectors get tough, we will continue to have fatality fires at nursing homes.
We have a nursing home here in Miller and we have actually discussed how we would deal with a fire there. After reading these articles though, I don't think we have done enough to prepare ourselves.
Is your department ready for a fire at the nursing home in your jurisdiction?
