Pasadena Nursing Home Evacuated After Air Conditioning Failure

[Updated]   City and county officials used 22 ambulances and two buses to relocate more than three-dozen residents from a Pasadena nursing home on Thursday after the facility’s air conditioning failed, sending temperatures inside the building into the 90s, officials said.

The mass evacuation began shortly after 7 p.m. at the Foothill Heights Care Center, 1515 N. Fair Oaks Ave., according to Pasadena Fire Department officials.

Just prior, Pasadena Health Department officials happened to pass by and noticed construction taking place on the roof of the building, Interim Fire Chief Bryan Frieders said. Knowing that the facility had experienced problems with its air conditions system recently, city officials asked county authorities to check on it.

It was determined the air conditioning had “failed catastrophically,” he said, “which led to temperature inside the facility getting up into the 90s.”

“The patients inside were suffering,” Frieders said. The decision was made to depopulate the nursing home.

Fire department and Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency officials coordinated to arrange transport of the facility’s 37 residents to a sister facility in Temple City, according to the chief. The operation took about three hours.

“All seemed to be very stable, and grateful to go to a place that was cooler,” he said.

Frieders commended the Pasadena Department of Public Health for its attentiveness, as well as the county’s Emergency Medical Services Agency for springing into action so quickly.

“They really step up to the plate when we need them,” he said.

“The most important part of this is to make sure those patients were taken care of,” he said. “Everything else is second.”

The matter was being looked into by the California Department of Public Health, which oversees the licensing of nursing homes.