Loved ones of care home residents in Merritt say it was “chaos” when those homes had to be evacuated last Monday.

One is Ellen Miller, who says her 87-year-old mother, with arthritis, and 93-year-old mother-in-law, with dementia, Parkinson’s disease and heart disease, live in The Florentine in Merritt.

She says residents were bussed from Merritt to the Kelowna Airport and then back, as planes weren’t flying due to heavy smoke. And she says residents were woken up about two hours later, and bussed to Summerland that same night.

“It was close to midnight, maybe 2 o’clock in the morning before they all got settled into their rooms. And the Summerland home didn’t know how many were coming, or when they were coming or anything. There was no notice given to them.”

A few hours later, now early Tuesday morning, she says residents were woken up and bussed back to the Kelowna Airport and flown to Vancouver Airport. Miller says residents were sitting at the airport in Vancouver for hours as Interior Health still had no set locations for them to go to.

She says the whole process, between leaving Summerland and leaving Vancouver, took about 12 hours.

“Between breakfast in the morning and 10:30 at night, my mom had a muffin. There was no supper provided, no water, no nothing. They just sat down there forever waiting,” Miller said.

“And then they were disbursed by taxi, or bus, I’m assuming, to homes all over the Lower Mainland. The one my mom went to was in White Rock… My mother-in-law was sent to one in Delta – I don’t know how she got there, I really don’t know. There was absolutely no contact made with families, that I’m aware of. For two days we tried to find out where our parents were.

“People’s luggage was lost, their clothing, their wheelchairs, my mother-in-law’s walker was left here in Merritt. There’s just no organization to it.”

The Florentine, Gillis House and Nicola Meadows were evacuated last Monday after Merritt was put on evacuation alert, due to the Lytton Creek wildfire. Miller agrees with evacuating care home residents when that was ongoing, but she hopes Interior Health apologizes to the seniors.

“My mother-in-law, in particular… is still totally confused as to what happened and she’s in very poor shape. My mom came through it okay, she’s had two days of complete rest. But when she got there she was in tears, because she was so tired and exhausted. And also confused as to what they were doing. So it was not well planned at all,” she said.

“I am not blaming the staff, the care aides or the nurses for any of this. They were only going by what was told to them, and the directions were changing every five minutes. It was just chaos for everybody I’m sure… But Interior Health, whoever is making these decisions up at the top, needs to give their head a shake and think about how it’s affecting those seniors.”

She disputed a statement sent out by Interior Health a week ago in the afternoon, which said care home residents in Merritt had already been evacuated and that families were being contacted about where they were taken. “They issued that statement… When in actual fact, everybody was still sitting in the homes, while they were trying to figure out where to send them. Nobody had moved at all, not that I’m aware of anyhow. The majority were still sitting in their homes, waiting to go.”

Meanwhile, Nicola Meadows had a COVID-19 outbreak declared on Tuesday, the day after it was evacuated, with two residents and three staff infected. Interior Health has not answered questions from NL News about whether those residents were also transported to the Okanagan and then to the Lower Mainland with others.

The evacuation alert has now been lifted for Merritt. As of Monday afternoon, residents taken to the Lower Mainland have not yet returned home.

“Of course they’re going to wait and make sure it’s safe. But my fear is how are they going to get them back here?” Miller said. “Are they going to transport them all over the place and then have them go through all of this again? Or are they going to be organized this time to get them back to where they need to go, like with a direct flight or direct bus line?”

In an unsigned statement, Interior Health told NL News that having residents return home depends on the wildfire situation, and that it will have more to say in the coming days.

“Each care home resident designates their primary contact, we have been in touch with these individuals to provide ongoing updates about their loved ones,” it says.