California regulators plan to revoke the licenses for two senior living communities where they say administrators and staff members abandoned some residents during a wildfire in October. The communities’ operator, Oakmont Senior Living, is refuting the allegations, which company officials said “have not been substantiated.”
“Oakmont Senior Living will continue to be transparent and responsive to resolve these unfounded allegations,” the company said in a statement to McKnight’s Senior Living.
The state Department of Social Services released an administrative complaint Thursday detailing the findings of its investigation into how workers at Villa Capri, an assisted living and memory care community, and the adjacent Varenna at Fountaingrove, an independent living and assisted living community, both in Santa Rosa, CA, responded to the wildfire known as the Tubbs Fire. Villa Capri was destroyed in the fire, but Oakmont previously announced plans to rebuild.
“Based on evidence gathered during the investigations and the statements of witnesses, the department has determined that Oakmont Senior Living failed to protect the health and safety of residents at Varenna and Villa Capri,” Michael Weston, the department’s deputy director of public affairs, said in a statement.
The complaint also indicated that the state is seeking to revoke the licenses of the communities’ executive directors and permanently prohibit them from owning or operating a licensed senior living community in the state.
Oakmont has 15 days to respond to the notice and request a hearing, Weston said.
On the night of the fire, a substitute administrator was working at Villa Capri and was not familiar with the community’s evacuation plan, according to the state report. At Varenna, staff members weren’t trained in how to respond to fires or how to evacuate, the state said.
No resident at either community died in the fire, but more than 20 residents at Villa Capri would have died if they had not been evacuated by family members and public safety workers after staff members left with some residents, the state said.
Oakmont officials told McKnight’s Senior Living that they have cooperated with Department of Social Services investigators since their inquiry began.
“The night of the Tubbs fire, we voluntarily began evacuating residents after we were repeatedly unable to reach emergency authorities on clogged 911 phone lines,” the company said in a statement. “We never received an official evacuation order from emergency authorities.”
“All 418 residents were safely evacuated,” the statement continued. “We are immensely grateful for the heroic life-saving efforts of our employees and their families, neighbors, residents and their families, and emergency authorities. Our residents and their safety have been, and always will be, our first priority.”
Oakmont previously set up a website to “provide an accurate account of actions taken by the company in response to the October 2017 Tubbs Fire,” but the state report said that the site contained some “false and misleading statements.” In August, the company agreed to implement unspecified measures as part of a lawsuit settlement related to events at Villa Capri.
Thursday, attorney Kathryn Steber, who represented 17 plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told the Press Democrat, “The state is holding Oakmont accountable and is sending a strong message not only to Oakmont but to the industry that it needs to spend money on the safety of the residents and that a pretty building is not enough.”
