We are very grateful to our wonderful quality in home care clients who reacted quickly and reasonably last week when 11 different fires broke out across San Diego County. In all, emergency responders sent out 125,000 evacuation notices as more than 10,000 acres burned. Many of our At Home Nursing Care clients had to be quickly moved for their safety.
“I’m grateful to Director of Operations Chelsea Kennedy and Caregiver Manager Denise Helmstetler who turned our office into a command post,” said Lauren Reynolds, founder of At Home Nursing Care, a leading provider of quality in home care across San Diego County and West Los Angeles County.
“They worked long days and gave our clients and employees all the help and support needed to stay out of harms way,” Reynolds said.
Chelsea and Denise
Best In-Home Care Managers
Kennedy and Helmstetler put a map on the wall and then marked where all of our employees and clients live. Then they monitored emergency announcements and news reporting to see which clients should be moved during the fire evacuations in San Diego. Supervising Nurse Denise Callas activated our emergency disaster plan for our most medically fragile clients.
When the smoke cleared, we had 4 clients and 4 employees evacuated. Thankfully, everyone is fine, except for one employee whose apartment building was damaged. Her belongings are smoky.
Unfortunately, we expect this fire threat to continue through the beginning of November. It’s a good time to give some extra thought to emergency plans, such as places where dependent elderly relatives should be taken during evacuations. The shelters are often not an option, as our dementia clients would not fare well in such a confusing atmosphere. Perhaps think of nearby relatives or friends or hotels as an option. The situation can change quickly, so have a couple options in mind.
We also gave out recognition to employees who went above and beyond to provide quality and emergency in home care, including working extra hours under pressure. Two of the employees recognized were Olga and Jennifer, long time employees who are part of our Care Ambassador program.
Olga and Jennifer
Quality In-Home Care Providers
Thank you to everyone who helped and thank you to the many first responders and firefighters who kept these 11 fires from causing even more damage.
At Home Nursing Care provides quality in home care to those facing a loss of independence due to age or health related factors. We are dementia care specialists and we are licensed by the California Department of Public Health to offer nursing in the home. We help you live a better life at home.