MANNFORD, Okla. — Our crews have seen selflessness on full display in Mannford after March 14’s wildfires.
2 News Oklahoma’s Douglas Braff highlights how a nursing home there had to quickly evacuate dozens of seniors to safety that day.
“I was walking outta my room, getting ready to go eat supper,” nursing home resident Terry Boyington recalled. “And then that's when I found out they was evacuating everything.”
As the wildfire was approaching nearby neighborhoods, staff at Cimarron Point Care Center in Mannford had to act quickly to get the 44 seniors living there out of harm’s way.
“There are lots of things that need to be done, and it takes a lot of teamwork,” Frank Sullivan pointed out.
Sullivan, the owner of CPCC, told 2 News it takes a while to evacuate a facility like his. Luckily, he said local authorities gave him an early heads up so the nursing home would have time.
“A lot of them are completely immobile. They can't walk,” he said. “It's not like taking 44 people out of a theater and walking 'em out to a parking lot. It takes a lot of assistance and a lot of people to assist.”
What made the evacuation to a Catoosa sister facility complicated was having everything seniors need, such as medications and inhalers. Sullivan said he wanted all their residents to have at Catoosa what they had in Mannford.
While most residents were transported by school bus, he noted, “Several had to be transported by ambulances. Some of 'em are on hospice, which means within six months they may be gone, and their condition is dire.”
To ensure all seniors had a bed in Catoosa, CPCC staff and volunteers drove to a sister facility in Sand Springs, loading mattresses and bedframes in their personal pickup trucks.
But not all residents went to Catoosa, like Boyington, who went back home with Amy, his wife of over three decades.
“They [the staff] were working their rears off to get them organized and out of here,” she recalled to 2 News. “And so, they came up to me and they said, ‘Amy, are you gonna take Terry home?’ And I said, ‘Well, yes.’”
Amy told us the nursing home staff placed the residents’ safety over their own self-interest.
“I know of one employee that was very terrified that his house was burning down by Pawnee,” she remembered. “He said, ‘My next-door neighbor's house is burning.’ And I said, ‘Oh my.’ And he said, ‘But come on, let's go get Terry.’”
“It makes me cry,” she said. “The employees here truly care about these residents.”
Those seniors safely returned to the nursing home in Mannford on Saturday afternoon.
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