URGENT: New Florida Law To Save Senior’s Lives During Power Outages

Friday, October 13, 2017

URGENT: New Florida Law To Save Senior’s Lives During Power Outages

Florida Rule 58AER17-1 
“Procedures Regarding Emergency Environmental Control for Assisted Living Facilities”Following the tragic deaths of eight elderly residents of a Florida assisted living facility, Florida Governor Rick Scott instituted an emergency rule requiring the state’s assisted living facilities and nursing homes to maintain generator backup power for a minimum of 96 hours.

Failure to comply by November 16, 2017 can mean fines of $1,000 per day for each facility.

Fundamentally, this ensures that interior temperatures do not exceed 80 degrees in the facilities. The state’s acute care hospitals already have a similar law in place.

Florida has the nation’s largest number of residents over 65 years old.  This new rule will add immense safety to those folks.  Not only will it keep the A/C on, but lights, medical equipment, food refrigeration, etc.

QFT&T is currently supplying one of the state’s largest operators of these facilities with TransFuelers to keep their generators up & running.

Taking good care of our elders should be a given. To allow eight of these people to die simply because of lack of power is tragic.