This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A 92-year-old woman with dementia was crying and screaming, asking her “mother” to stop the chaos as distressed aged care residents were evacuated from their Queensland home.

One staff member had to be surrounded by police officers after other staff threatened to “punch her head in” if she did not give them patient care folders.

The chaotic scenes after the abrupt shutdown of the Earle Haven Retirement Village last month have been played out at the aged care royal commission in Brisbane.

The royal commission was played the recording of a triple-zero call from the facility’s clinical manager, asking help to get 69 residents out of the facility.

'My heart is crying': Indigenous elders face death far from home amid aged care shortages Read more

Ambulance supervisor Cary Strong said he arrived to find a removalist truck at the home, with furniture and boxes being removed.

He saw a man in a wheelchair whose urinary bag was being dragged behind him as the resident tried to push himself to the foyer.

A number of staff were arguing, while an elderly man with dementia became very emotional and disorientated.

Strong also had to comfort a 92-year-old woman with dementia outside the reception area.

“She was very distressed, very disorientated, crying. Her daughter was there; she was crying as well.

“She just kept crying and screaming. She thought her daughter was her mother and kept referring to her as her mother, to please ‘stop this’.”

Strong said there were no care plans for the 69 residents, who required welfare items, food and water.

He asked for the patient care plans, but was told they were on a computer that had been removed from the premises. After he asked for whatever documentation that could be found, a woman gave him two black folders and a set of keys to the drug safes.

“The young lady that I asked, to her credit, she actually hung on to both of those folders,” Strong told a hearing in Brisbane on Monday.

“She was positioned between two police officers due to the fact that she stated to me that other staff or other persons wanted those folders and they wanted to punch her head in.”