By Elizabeth George

There was a spate of natural disaster movies in the 1970s that I still remember all these years later. Does anyone else recall the suspense of The Poseidon Adventure or The Towering Inferno? And years later in another twist of the genre, the love and loss of the passengers of The Titanic? C’mon, you cried when Jack died of hypothermia, don’t say you didn’t.

I can’t remember the details of the earlier films but – to this day – I can conjure up the fear and awe I experienced when watching the devastating impact and loss of life that nature wrought upon the unfortunate humans involved. (Though nature was mostly helped along in the devastation by an incompetent human being or someone who decided that they didn’t need to comply with certain life-saving regulations. But I digress.)

The power of nature – to wreak havoc and to inspire wonder – can make us feel very small in its presence. Not a bad lesson every now and again.

Fire and water have the power to harm, damage, and destroy. And in the world of senior living, they can pose threats to our residents and staff and bring costly damage to our facilities.

A Nurse Call System that Does a Lot More to Protect Communities from Fire and Flood

Fortunately, we’ve become smarter in the tools developed to protect ourselves from the potentially devastating effects of fire and flood.

I spoke with Myron Kowal, owner and CEO of RCare, about how they help clients protect against these threats. RCare is a global provider of wireless nurse call systems and personal emergency response systems. (They’re also a Senior Living FORESIGHT partner.) RCare has evolved its nurse call systems over the last several years, integrating with fire protection systems and water sensors to send alerts to staff before a related problem escalates.

“If a fire alarm goes off anywhere in their facility, a community’s care staff and facilities team will receive an alert through their RCare system to their phone, email, nurse console, or pagers. The best thing is that it happens automatically. The alerts are not reliant on a resident hearing an alarm, smelling smoke, or calling staff for assistance,” Kowal says.

World-Class Partners

Since its founding, RCare has focused on developing relationships with best-in-class partners across the product spectrum. Ranging from wander technology to electronic health records systems to Amazon’s voice command tool that many of us know as Alexa.

RCare integrates with more than 70 fire panel system models from 20 different manufacturers.

“The interoperability of our platform means that communities don’t have to monitor multiple systems,” says Kowal. “We’ve made it easy for their fire protection equipment to communicate directly to their nurse call solution.”

Your Virtual Building Inspector

In addition to fire threats, flooding is also a risk and doesn’t always arise from a natural disaster. Flooding can happen when residents or staff forget to turn off a faucet, or it can occur in areas of a building that aren’t checked frequently, like elevator pits, for example. “Anywhere where there’s concern about frozen pipes, boiler leaks or sink and tub overflows are great places for water sensors,” says Kowal. When water is detected, sensors automatically send an alert to staff, before the problem escalates.

The other benefit of integrating fire protection systems and water sensors with your RCare nurse call system?

One less thing for your staff to worry about.

To learn more about RCare’s capabilities, visit their website.