Week of October 1-5, 2007
Previous Questions of the Week

Given your experiences in your community, how vulnerable are the elderly to natural disasters?

To learn more about the topic, see the following articles: 

• Report: Caring for Vulnerable Elders During a Disaster: National Findings of the 2007 Nursing Home Hurricane Summit (May 2007)
  Sixty-five national and state leaders from long term care, emergency management, transportation, energy, medicine and state and federal regulatory agencies convened for the second Nursing Home Hurricane Summit with the intent to “keep vulnerable elders and other persons with disabilities residing in long term care facilities safe during times of disaster.” While emergency planning has improved over the years, older persons in nursing homes remain vulnerable and invisible and the “feds, state and community have got to work harder together to protect nursing home residents during hurricanes.” The report offers 10 key recommendations.
  
  

• Greece: After the Flames, Elderly Greeks Wonder What's Left (August 29, 2007)
  Because of the raging wild fires in Greece , older persons were evacuated from villages that many of them have never left. The evacuation happened so fast, that some, like Dimitra Agrida, an 85-year-old widow, didn’t even have time to put on shoes. However, those evacuated consider themselves lucky. More than 63 people have already died in the fire. Says Iannoula Iannopoulos, 77, "there are just 30 people living there and we are all old. What could we do against the flames?” 
  
  

• Japan: Earthquake Shows Elderly Living in Flimsy Houses (July 24, 2007)
  Ten out of 11 victims of the recent magnitude-6.8 earthquake in the Niigata Prefecture in western Japan were older persons, indicating that many elderly live in houses with insufficient quake-resistance. Although the municipal government introduced financial subsidies to make housing more earthquake proof, many seniors continue to live in unsafe housing, as the repairs to their old houses would exceed the government sponsored subsidy. Yoshiteru Murosaki, director of the National Research Institute of Fire and Disaster, explains: "Elderly people lack the desire and funds to conduct reinforcement work on their houses. The amount of subsidies should be boosted, or subsidies should be provided even for work that they can afford to finance by themselves."