Patients relocated after electrical fire at Burlingame facility
A small electric fire caused a power outage at a Burlingame nursing home Friday, causing a mass evacuation of elderly and frail patients who depend on electric medical devices.
Fire officials said the small fire broke out about 9:45 a.m. at the Burlingame Long Term Care nursing home and was caused by an overloaded electric panel for a service elevator.
The outage required that many patients be moved from the facility. Ambulances and other transit vehicles lined up along Trousdale Avenue and California Drive.
At about 2:30 p.m. Friday afternoon, officials put out a call for mutual aid, scrambling to find enough vehicles and evacuation sites to get patients loaded up and relocated.
"This is the largest nursing home in the county, so to find 278 beds is almost an impossibility," said Judith Guilfoyle, the San Mateo Ombudsman.
"We had 270 patients here this morning. Approximately 70 patients have been relocated to a variety of different spots," said Marcus Weenig, CEO of Burlingame Long Term Care.
Some patients were taken outside San Mateo County to the East Bay, San Francisco and Palo Alto.
KTVU asked whether the facility had a backup generator.The fire chief says it did.
"We did have limited use of power because of that back up generator. So we had an elevator to get people down from the second floor. We did have some limited lighting in the hallway," said Central County Fire Chief John Kammeyer.
Agencies as far as Yolo County responded to the call for help and San Francisco's fire department had its first opportunity to deploy two new multi-casualty transport buses.
"These aren't regular buses, these are buses that have been retrofitted with specially designed equipment to have advanced life support," said San Francisco Fire Captain Tony Rivera.
Basically, the former SF Muni buses have been converted into giant ambulances that can accommodate up to 12 gurneys at once.
By 5;30p.m., power was restored. The nursing care facility's CEO Marcus Weenig says everything was executed according to their emergency plan and credited the nursing home staff and emergency responders.
When asked by KTVU if the facility could have been better prepared, Weenig answered, "I don't think so."
Weenig
says they will review the incident, however, and others say there are lessons to be learned for Burlingame and the greater Bay Area about emergency preparedness.
"All the nursing homes, all the agencies, we really need to prepare," said Guilfoyle.
"That's what we really need to identify, is in a non-emergency, how do we relocate nearly 300 people. So it's a good lesson for us," said Chief Kammeyer.
The fire chief says state and county officials are checking on whether the building was in compliance with all codes.
Patients who were relocated will remain in place Friday night and arrangements will be made to bring them back to the facility and cover any expenses.