The
California Energy Crisis:
It Could be A Death Sentence
to Disabled Citizens
By
Blane N. Beckwith
Frank A. Jones
Last Wednesday, the Oakland Mayor s Commission on
the Disabled met in City Hall to discuss the problems rolling blackouts
can cause for the disabled. The Mayor was not there; he did pass by, almost,
if not in fact, oblivious to this meeting.
However,
a number of important
representatives were there, including PG &E s representative, the
Oakland Fire Department s representative, someone from Senator Don Perata s
office, and a number of disabled advocates and groups were also in attendance.
The Oakland Fire
Department s representative stated that the Fire Department was starting
a list of those persons with special needs; it wants to be prepared during
times of these blackouts to provide emergency backup care to them. The
goal is to assist special needs individuals to sustain themselves for
72-hours during times of disaster. However, according to PG & E s
representative, they already have a list of those needing special care.
Under some questioning,
PG & E s representative and others admitted that their list did not
indicate anything in terms of actually providing any real exemption from
blackouts for those persons on their list.
But people with
disabilities have special needs, unlike many able-bodied citizens, and
an energy blackout can be more than a mere inconvenience to a person with
disabilities.
Persons
with disabilities, when hit by a power outage, are confronted with a number
of problems that are not only hazardous, but seriously life-threatening.
Whereas most able-bodied people are greatly inconvenienced by a
blackout, some people with disabilities could actually die if the power
goes off.
A
significant number of disabled depend on various life-support devices,
all of which are either directly powered by electricity or batteries which
must be recharged. Persons
with pulmonary or breathing impairments are dependent on electrically
powered ventilators to help them breathe and stay alive.
Although many ventilators are equipped with a battery backup, these
battery backups usually are only able to last for several hours at best.
And these batteries need to be recharged by electricity to replenish
them. For these people,
a blackout lasting a day or more could easily cause death by suffocation.
Even
a basic device, like a motorized wheelchair or scooter, powered by batteries,
can create a dangerous situation if the batteries cannot be recharged.
If a person who is dependent on a motorized wheelchair cannot recharge
the batteries every day, as is required, the wheelchair is rendered useless
and unusable. When a person
with a disability is put in a position where he/she cannot use his/her
wheelchair, that person s life is put in real jeopardy because he/she
is unable to move around the house or apartment to perform the basic tasks
of daily living. Basic
tasks such as preparing food, going to the bathroom, and other movements
about the house, things able-bodied people take for granted, become impossible.
Added
to this, the lives of wheelchair dependent people are further put at risk
because their uncharged, battery-dead wheelchairs prohibit them from traveling
outside to do necessary errands, such as grocery shopping or keeping vital
doctors appointments. It
must always be remembered, a motorized wheelchair is not a luxury,
but is instead a key component to a disabled person s life.
A wheelchair is the only means to move about, and is every bit
as important to basic survival as an able-bodied person's arms and legs
are to their survival.
Also,
many persons with disabilities require various assistive devices to live,
such as electric door openers, electric lifts to transfer from bed to
wheelchair, electric stair lifts and elevators if they live in a multi-story
dwelling. When a blackout
causes an elevator to be unusable, an able-bodied person has the option
of the stairway. A disabled
person doesn t. An unusable
elevator can either trap a disabled person inside his/her apartment, or
prohibit that person from entering his/her own home.
These are the hidden consequences of these power outages that go unmentioned in the local or national media. Yet, as discussed above, power outages can be a death sentence to many of our disabled citizens. And the tragedy of this power crisis fiasco is that we, the public, don t really know how much of this shortage is real and how much is real manipulation by people and authorities we have never heard of until now.[] [See Gary N. Gray]
Blane
N. Beckwith
is
a disabled Advocate for the Disabled.
He is a college student who lives in and
attends school in Berkeley.
Frank
A. Jones
is
the CEO
Gibbsmagazine.com
