GADSDEN COUNTY, FL — Neighbors in a Quincy community say frequent, unannounced power outages are creating serious safety concerns for vulnerable residents who rely on medical devices to stay alive.
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Several residents say outages tend to occur overnight with no alerts or communication from the utility department before or during shutdowns. The lack of notice is especially alarming for senior residents who depend on medical equipment like oxygen machines, dialysis equipment and C-PAP devices.
"I use to use a C-PAP machine, and I don't use it no more but I use to use a C-PAP machine, which runs by electricity, and like I said, it's a lot of elderly around here, and they don't know what's going on nobody gives no explanation or nothing of what happened," Naomi Colson said.
One recent outage lasted several hours, from the early morning until after sunrise during a week of cold weather, leaving residents without power and without answers.
"Sometimes time it will be out so long, sometimes we sit on our car just for the heat. And then we say oh… we will leave something on and say oh the lights are back on," Colson said.
Richard Ash, director of Quincy Utility, says the most recent outages have been linked to weather conditions and wildlife interfering with power lines. He says crews are available around the clock, and residents can report problems through an after-hours phone line.
"After hours, you call the after-hours number, and that notifies the lineman that there is a power outage… we review the power outages that we receive every night. And we take a look at them and see what the causes ar,e see if there is something that we can go and fix and everything. And so, if we would've saw something like an overload issues that is something we would have addressed pretty quickly," Ash said.
Despite the utility's response system, neighbors say they want a more proactive approach, including advance notifications when possible, to help protect those who depend on electricity the most. They say better communication could save someone's life in their neighborhood.
Until there's a consistent way to notify residents about outages, neighbors say people who depend on life-saving medical equipment will continue to be at risk.
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