Paul Bass Photos
AMR crew arrives inside nursing home for another patient.
Patient wheeled to Hamden nursing home’s van at 11:40 p.m.
Emergency crews worked through the night to find beds for elderly patients at the former Jewish Home for the Aged on Davenport Avenue after a frozen sprinkler burst and water leaked into the facility’s main electrical panel.
Acting under a regional Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) plan, officials found available temporary beds in area nursing homes for the 185 patients at the home at 169 Davenport, now run by new New York-based owners and called Advanced Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation.
Working with operators of other nursing care facilities, officials located 200 available beds in nine to ten facilities from Milford to the Naugatuck Valley up to Hartford, more than enough for the patients, said city emergency management chief Rick Fontana. He said two of the patients went to the hospital.
The most infirm patients were loaded onto stretchers and sent first to the nearest facilities. American Medical Response led the transport effort, its ambulances lined up on Ward Street throughout the evening, its drivers waiting as each patient became ready.
Colon arrives to pitch in.
At 11:40 a.m. Val Colon and John Battista, the nursing director and maintenance director of Whitney Manor Rehabilitation Center, pulled up in a van to pick up seven or eight of the patients to bring to their Hamden facility.
It took until 7:15 a.m. to move the last patient. Ambulances transported 70 of the patients; 83 were taken by taxi. (Earlier this morning officials had offered slightly different numbers, based on the belief that some patients had not been at the facility at the time.)
“Not only do you have to get the people moved, you have to get all their patient records. You’ve got to have their medications. You’ve got to have three days of clothing,” Fontana said.
Emergency officials and nursing home operators in FEMA’s Region 2 plan are in place for just these occasions, Fontana said. He said New Haven was on the receiving end for nursing home patients after an evacuation in Milford around six months ago.
The burst sprinkler head was reported at 11:43 a.m., Fire Chief John Alston Jr. said at the scene Monday night. The water damage shorted out the circuit breakers in the facility’s main control panel, he said.
At first management thought it could repair the problem in three to four hours. Electricity remained on in the building thanks to a generator.
An Advanced Nursing official who identified himself as Ben Axelrod directing transport traffic.
The damage turned out to be more extensive. Alston said officials decided to start the evacuation around 10:15 p.m. The idea was to take advantage of the mild weather before the generator would need to be turned off and the facility would lose all power.
Michael Solomon, the business development director for the facility’s new owner, said he hopes to have needed new parts in place and the facility reopened in a few days.
“Thank God it wasn’t a fire,” Solomon said as he observed the coming and going of ambulance and other transport crews from the facility’s Ward Street gate.
Reyes, Fontana and Turcio inside the nursing home during the evacuation.
“It’s going to take at least two days to repair this and another to get the parts,” city Building Official Jim Turcio reported at 12:53 a.m. Tuesday. At some point the generator will need to be shut down while “they change all the breakers and the transfer switch.”
Mayor Toni Harp and mayoral Chief of Staff Tomas Reyes were on scene monitoring the evacuation. Harp said she was proud of how the emergency team — including Fontana’s department, the fire and police departments, and the Livable City Initiative — kicked into gear. “Everyone works so well together,” she said.
A New Chapter
Architect’s sketch for main entrance redesign.
The nursing home was operated as the not-for-profit Jewish Home for the Aged beginning in 1915, when the surrounding neighborhood had a significant population. The home declared bankruptcy in 2011, long after most Jews had left the area.
A for-profit Chicago-based nursing-home operator named Makhlouf “Mark” Suissa of Chicago purchased the building for $5.4 million in 2011 and tried to make a go of it, but encountered repeated problems. City inspectors found repeated structural problems that led to patients shivering and emergency repairs ordered. The center had over 200 beds, but the patient census recently fell to around 150.
A new owner, Menajem Salamon of Brooklyn, purchased the property a year ago for $5 million, according to land records. The new owner began managing the property and working on renovations this fall, according to business development director Solomon. He said the company has begun investing $3 million in upgrading the home.
Solomon said architects have completed designs for the upgrade, which will include converting the former 4,000 square-foot adult day care space into a rehabilitation center with 32 beds, once state regulators give the approval. The company has put in new plumbing and heating systems and signs already en route to a “Grade A” modernization, Solomon said. It has hired new nursing and medical staff and increased the patient census to 185.
“Everything’s new. It takes time,” Solomon said.