Right now, thousands of residents living in Florida nursing homes and assisted living facilities are being forced to move for the second time in two weeks, while others never went back to their homes after Hurricane Helene.
Nursing homes already closed due to damage from Hurricane Helene
The I-Team has been combing through the data and has identified dozens of Tampa Bay area nursing homes or assisted living facilities located in evacuation zone A.
That means frail elderly residents must be moved to other locations whenever a hurricane or tropical storm threatens them.
Thousands of additional residents of senior residential care facilities live in evacuation zones B, C, D, and E.
In 2017, rescue workers and volunteers scrambled to save seniors in a Texas nursing home as rising water threatened them.
The same year, eight people died at the Rehabilitation Center in Hollywood Hills, in Hollywood, FL, because a prolonged power outage caused them to overheat.
A study from the University of South Florida and Brown University estimates almost 500 other seniors died indirectly from Hurricane Irma in the 90-day period that followed.