As hot, wind-fed wildfires swirled around her town in early September last year, Darlene Simmons, 76, was busy cooking spaghetti in her kitchen. As a resident of Middletown, a small town in Northern California, she had been through other wildfires before. However, her home, where she has lived for 45 years, had never been harmed.
So Simmons was staying put — until a police officer knocked on the door. He told her that she must leave immediately. She grabbed her medication and an address book, but was forced, reluctantly, to leave everything else behind, including her cane and family photos.
“I am glad that I was forced to leave,” said Simmons, who was near tears as she recalled the day. “I could hear propane tanks exploding as I drove away.”
That night, Simmons’ house burned down. The wildfire, one of the worst in California’s history, bent her refrigerator in half and melted metal. Her entire block was reduced to ashes.
Natural disasters, which appear to be on the rise, in part, because of climate change, are especially hard for older adults. They are particularly vulnerable, because many have chronic illnesses that are exacerbated during the heat of a fire or high water of a flood, and many are understandably reluctant to leave homes that hold so much history.
Studies show that more than half the people who died in Katrina, the hurricane that hit New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast 10 years ago, were aged 65 or older. Many were trapped in their homes; some died of health complications caused by flooding.
Older adults also died in the Middletown fire, including one 72-year-old woman who had advanced multiple sclerosis.
“They cannot get out of harm’s way fast enough,” said Jenny Campbell, a non-profit consultant in the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore, who deals with age-related issues. “Sometimes they might not even have a way to flee. Or they might lack a larger social system and so they might not be warned in time.”
However, thorough disaster preparation can, literally, save lives.
Since Katrina, more tools have emerged to help. The Red Cross offers emergency preparation plans for older people on its Web site, including a checklist for creating a disaster supply kit that includes a seven-day medication supply, flashlights, emergency contacts and vital records. They can be stored in a duffel bag or backpack.
Communities are also forming coalitions to help. After devastating floods hit Colorado in 2013, shelters did not have oxygen tanks for older adults who landed there. So the state set up the Home Health Emergency Preparedness Committee to strengthen preparations.
“As more disasters occur, seniors will want to build emergency preparedness, but seniors think they can take care of themselves,” said Tiffany Turner, owner of Nurse Next Door in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Having a strong social network is also imperative, said experts, who encourage older people to notify family members, neighbors and caregivers in advance that they might need help during emergencies.
Think about “who will come get you,” said Sharon Roth Maguire, chief clinical quality officer for BrightStar Care, a senior home care franchise. “Who knows you are here? Even if you have a checklist, you may not be known.”
Signing up for local special needs registries, which help locate and evacuate people, is also useful. These registries must be regularly updated along with any disaster plans, Campbell said. Older adults should also notify sheriffs, police departments and neighborhood emergency teams.
“The more connections you have, the better, during the rush of the disaster,” Campbell added.
There are many smartphone applications designed to help those caught in a disaster. Apps like iUDAME and ManDown, developed by firefighters, can alert friends, family or local authorities. ManDown has an SOS option that issues a safety alert; it also has a built-in GPS tracker.
Middletown resident Gary Lospaluto, 60, was heading to his volunteer work when he saw cars streaming down the mountain away from the fires. He credits a friend’s smartphone app, which can turn into a radio scanner and tap into emergency messages, for keeping him updated during the crisis.
“People were not warned about the fire,” said Lospaluto, who lives in his van after being in an evacuation center. “It was by word of mouth, but access to accurate information is the most critical thing you need.”
Protecting important paperwork is also a necessity.
Health insurance cards, medical records, living wills or medical powers of attorneys should be kept in waterproof files, Maguire said. The free kit Vial of Life lets people store vital information in a baggie that can be attached to the refrigerator door or put in the freezer.
“If you are sheltering in place, you should have a kit,” Maguire said.
Documents can also be put in a safety deposit box or stored electronically in cloud storage. Campbell recommends that older people send themselves e-mails with all their documents, including medical records, attached. During Katrina, patients were frequently transferred to nursing homes that had no medical records for them, she said.
People with dementia, who can become disoriented during disasters, should also have special identity tags, Maguire said. GPS-enabled devices can be put in a shoe, or people can wear a medical alert necklace, she said.
“There also needs to be a backup plan,” she added.
Caregivers can offer valuable help for handicapped people. Lenny Verkhoglaz, chief executive of Executive Care, a home healthcare franchise, uses the company’s four-wheel-drive vehicles to pick up caregivers and transport them to homes during disasters.
Helene Dressendofer, 82, wishes she had better prepared for Hurricane Sandy, which hit the US east coast in 2012. Dressendofer’s waterfront home in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, was flooded when a wave washed over it.
“Nothing in the house was salvageable,” said Dressendofer, who now lives in an apartment and is still waiting for insurance reimbursements for her ruined home.
Her documents, which were stored in cardboard folders, were destroyed.
“Do not do it that way,” she said.
Instead, she recommended putting documents in “nicely sealed plastic boxes and scanning photos.”
Also, log everything that you own and put them in a secure place, she added.
Then there are the invisible scars. After a disaster, older adults might be even more prone than younger people to suffer from depression, sleeplessness and confusion. Dressendofer said she still has nightmares about the hurricane’s effects.
“You lose the past and it is hard to rebuild your life. It hurts and will hurt for many years,” she said.
Most older people soldier on, which can prolong psychological trauma, said Gregory Hall, associate professor of psychology at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Talking and writing about the trauma can speed healing and even being in an evacuation center can make communicating feelings easier because older people are around other survivors, he said.
“Get back into a routine,” Hall added. “Establish normal eating and sleeping patterns, and begin looking forward and creating new memories.”
Easier said than done. Simmons said she coped by reminding herself that change was part of life. She already has plans to put a manufactured home on the burned out lot where her house once stood.
“I am starting over,” she said.
The EU’s biggest banks have spent years quietly creating a new way to pay that could finally allow customers to ditch their Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc cards — the latest sign that the region is looking to dislodge two of the most valuable financial firms on the planet. Wero, as the project is known, is now rolling out across much of western Europe. Backed by 16 major banks and payment processors including BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and Worldline SA, the platform would eventually allow a German customer to instantly settle up with, say, a hotel in France
On August 6, Ukraine crossed its northeastern border and invaded the Russian region of Kursk. After spending more than two years seeking to oust Russian forces from its own territory, Kiev turned the tables on Moscow. Vladimir Putin seemed thrown off guard. In a televised meeting about the incursion, Putin came across as patently not in control of events. The reasons for the Ukrainian offensive remain unclear. It could be an attempt to wear away at the morale of both Russia’s military and its populace, and to boost morale in Ukraine; to undermine popular and elite confidence in Putin’s rule; to
A traffic accident in Taichung — a city bus on Sept. 22 hit two Tunghai University students on a pedestrian crossing, killing one and injuring the other — has once again brought up the issue of Taiwan being a “living hell for pedestrians” and large vehicle safety to public attention. A deadly traffic accident in Taichung on Dec. 27, 2022, when a city bus hit a foreign national, his Taiwanese wife and their one-year-old son in a stroller on a pedestrian crossing, killing the wife and son, had shocked the public, leading to discussions and traffic law amendments. However, just after the
With escalating US-China competition and mutual distrust, the trend of supply chain “friend shoring” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fragmentation of the world into rival geopolitical blocs, many analysts and policymakers worry the world is retreating into a new cold war — a world of trade bifurcation, protectionism and deglobalization. The world is in a new cold war, said Robin Niblett, former director of the London-based think tank Chatham House. Niblett said he sees the US and China slowly reaching a modus vivendi, but it might take time. The two great powers appear to be “reversing carefully
RSS