Wow I wonder if some dealer sold a 100 new tubs to one customer!
Disease leads to replacement of 100 hot tubs at 3 local resortsLegionnaires’ disease victim settles lawsuit and campaigns to
save others from suffering
By Bob Cuddy - May 01, 2007
A San Luis Obispo developer is replacing 100 hot tubs in three of his resorts
in this county after a woman allegedly contracted Legionnaires’ disease at
another of his resorts in Monterey County more than five years ago.
The new tubs at the SeaVenture Resort in Pismo Beach, The Inn at Morro Bay
and the Apple Farm Inn in San Luis Obispo
will cost him more than a quarter
of a million dollars, according to John King of King Ventures.
King’s insurers also settled a lawsuit that cost them slightly less than $1 million,
filed by Stacy Intille, the woman who said she contracted Legionnaire’s disease
at King’s Marina Dunes Resort in 2001.
County health officials ordered the change locally after Intille, a nurse for 16
years, contacted them and they inspected King’s San Luis Obispo County resorts.
Intille told The Tribune she has made it a campaign to make sure nobody else
goes through what she did.
“As a survivor of this horrible disease,” she wrote in an e-mail, “I am working
now to educate others and to make changes in our public health system to
address the risk of Legionnaires’ disease from spas.”
Intille wrote that she stayed in the Marina Dunes Resort from Sept. 7-10, 2001,
and twice used the hot tub, located on a balcony.
She developed flulike symptoms, including fevers, stomachaches and coughing.
Eventually, she learned she had Legionnaires’ disease, a respiratory infection
that can include pneumonia. Between 8,000 and 18,000 people contract it in
the U.S. each year.
County Environmental Health Director Curt Batson said spas
used by the public must be drained after every use and
then disinfected and cannot use separate heaters or filtration.
King’s three local resorts did not meet those specifications, Batson said.
He told the developer to get the spas up to standards. King has until October.
King told The Tribune he has been gradually replacing the tubs with a safer
product and has completed about one-third of them. He also has reviewed
the procedures used by hotel staff.
“We want to make sure these things are really safe,” he said.
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/183/story/30217.html
