PORTLAND – The deaths of dozens of New Orleans nursing home patients who failed to evacuate in advance of Hurricane Katrina are raising questions about the adequacy of disaster plans for nursing homes in Maine.

Maine’s 144 nursing homes are licensed and inspected by the state, but its focus is on quality of care rather than on planning for a potential disaster that could put nearly 7,500 patients at risk.

Licensing regulations require a disaster plan, but the specific requirements are not spelled out. Some officials fear that plans are outdated or inadequate and should be updated before a crisis develops.

Maine hasn’t seen a Category 3 hurricane like Katrina since records started being kept in 1886, and few facilities would likely face the kind of flooding that occurred in New Orleans.

But there have been instances in which nursing homes have been evacuated because of major storms.

“Nobody does the planning until something happens,” said Joanne Potvin, emergency management director for Lewiston-Auburn and Androscoggin County.

A survey of the county’s six nursing homes found three were using the same ambulance service to evacuate to the same location, she said.

In Portland, Deputy Fire Chief Terry Walsh said the city reviewed plans for its four local nursing homes and found some serious deficiencies. He said the plans since have been updated and improved.

“A lot of people made assumptions of where they could send their folks to. Everyone was planning in isolation and that just simply doesn’t work,” Walsh said.

Bangor officials, like those in many other communities, leave such planning to the nursing homes themselves and to the state.

Some nursing homes have begun to revise their plans, and late last year representatives from several homes and assisted living facilities attended state emergency management training.

“Suddenly we’re being inundated with questions about how to evacuate,” said Biddeford Deputy Fire Chief Marc Bellefeuille, the city’s emergency management director.

“The plans are a little outdated,” he said. “One of the glaring deficiencies is who to contact in an emergency. Those phone lists, whether kept by nursing homes or a fire department, quickly become obsolete.”

The head of the state ombudsman’s office for elderly affairs said the bureau receives about 1,600 complaints a year about nursing homes, but she is unaware of any that deal with disaster plans.

“Because we’ve not had a natural disaster in the state of huge proportions such as other states, it has not been something we’ve heard from families here … the public is not as aware,” Brenda Gallant said.

“When there’s nothing like 9-11 or Katrina, complacency sets in,” said Arthur Cleaves, Maine’s emergency management director. “You don’t do all the planning you could.”