Wauneta’s nursing home residents moved temporarily to McCook home

    Monday’s extreme heat sent a lot of people indoors to air conditioned homes and businesses, but residents at the Wauneta Care & Therapy Center had to move to a different community.
    Due to the heat, all 29 residents are currently at Hillcrest Nursing Home in McCook.
    Lisa Kisinger, administrator at the Wauneta nursing home, said they are in the process of installing an entirely new Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning system at their facility.
    With temperatures soaring past 100 Monday and heat advisories from the National Weather Service, the air conditioning could not keep up, Kisinger said.
    Two of the units have been installed already, but two more will be added. In addition, while some of the individual units in each room are in, more are to be added and none of those are hooked up to power yet, she said.
    Per rules, Kisinger said the facility must be maintained at 85 degrees or lower in the summer months. By 8 a.m. Monday, it was already 85 degrees in the building, she said.
    “We had no choice but to move them,” she said.
    “It’s not home, but they are adapting,” she added.
    The Wauneta Care & Therapy residents are all in the same wing at Hillcrest, and staff from the Wauneta facility are working there, Kisinger said.
    “We are very grateful to Hillcrest,” she said.
    The Wauneta facility also had a lot of help from neighboring communities to move the residents in short order. Along with Wauneta’s two vans, Perkins County sent a bus, Dundy County provided a van and bus, while Hillcrest offered a bus for transport.
    The plan is to keep the residents in McCook until the HVAC work is finished within one to two weeks, she said.
    Hunter Heating & Cooling of Wauneta and Pivot Electric of Imperial were hired for the HVAC upgrades.