Four voicemail messages left on Governor Rick Scott’s personal cellphone by a nursing home where 11 people have died in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma were deleted.
CBS Miami reported that the messages were left during the 36 hours before the first patient died.
Natasha Anderson, a vice president with The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, says she called the governor’s cellphone requesting ‘immediate assistance’ in restoring the power to the home’s air conditioning system.
Scott claims that no one from the nursing home indicated a crisis or that patients were in danger.
Florida Governor Rick Scott (pictured) is facing backlash after his office revealed it deleted four voicemail messages from the nursing home where 11 people died in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma
Hurricane Irma made landfall in South Florida on the morning of September 10 and, at around 3pm, the nursing home lost power.
At 3.49pm, nursing home workers contacted Florida Power and Light with an emergency request to restore power to their air condition unit. FPL told the administrators they would have crews sent out to restore power the next morning.
After repeated calls to FPL, the nursing home made a call to Governor Scott’s cellphone on September 11, which went straight to voicemail.
Anderson made three additional calls to Scott’s cellphone on September 12.
The Department of Health said the nursing home was told that if they had anyone in distress they should call 911 for help.
On September 11, between 3am and 6am, five patients at the nursing home died. State officials say temperatures inside the nursing home were high and that some of the dead registered body temperatures as high as 109 degrees.
Following this, the nursing home was evacuated. Six more patients died in the hours and days that followed – the latest occurring on Thursday.
The power for the air conditioning unit at The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills (pictured) was lost on September 10 around 3pm. The governor’s office said the home should have called 911 or evacuated patients across the street to save lives
Since then, the home’s access to Medicaid funding has been halted and its license to operate has been pulled.
The governor’s office said the voicemails were deleted in accordance with the state’s public records law.
‘The voicemails were not retained because the information from each voicemail was collected by the Governor’s staff and given to the proper agency for handling. Every call was returned,’ said Lauren Schenone, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office.
‘None of this changes the fact that this facility chose not to call 911 or evacuate their patients to the hospital across the street to save lives.’