Letter: Care excellent during evacuation | Hilton Head Island Packet

It is difficult to adequately express my thanks and appreciation (and that of my out-of-state siblings) to the wonderful staff at Bloom at Bluffton for the care they provided the residents during the recent evacuation.

My mother is a resident of its Memory Care Unit. Thanks to incredibly thorough advance planning, director K’Lee Latham and her amazing staff managed to load close to 50 residents with varying degrees of limited mobility and cognitive awareness on buses, avoid the congested major highways, and deliver them all safely to an excellent hotel in Columbia.

My husband and I also evacuated to Columbia, so we were able to observe the arrangements first-hand. Nearly the entire staff of the facility accompanied the residents, leaving behind their homes and families to an uncertain fate, in order to provide the care and continuity so necessary to these folks who must have been completely bewildered by what was happening to them.

And they accomplished this with an amazing show of dedication and grace. There they stayed for six nights, with staff members working literally 24/7 with little privacy since they were assigned to residents’ rooms in order to keep them safe and comfortable. I am filled with gratitude to each and every one of them who are truly heroes in my eyes.