PG&E’s rolling blackouts during October affected some residents more than others. Photo: Chris Polidoroff
At first, Alex Genis wasn’t sure if his electricity would be cut off during PG&E’s late October outages.
On the utility’s online map, Genis’s home appeared to be just inside the colored circle marking outage areas, but his address near Alta Bates Hospital did not show up in PG&E’s locator of homes affected by outages.
This confusing contradiction was encountered by many in Berkeley, and many, like Genis, simply decided to take the risk rather than evacuate or adequately prepare for a days-long power outage.
So Genis was relieved when the lights remained on on Saturday, October 26th.
“I was really grateful, but even just the few hours it took to make that decision was incredibly stressful,” said Genis, 31, a policy and research specialist at the World Disability Institute.
For him, that was a bigger risk than losing a frozen pizza or staying over at a friend’s apartment. Genis has been a quadriplegic for 15 years, uses a wheelchair and relies on a caregiver to help him with daily tasks.
Many in the disability community have criticized PG&E and local and state governments for failing to adequately address accessibility needs in a lasting harbinger of the blackouts that plagued Northern California throughout October.
In Berkeley, city staff worked hard during the outage, canvassing the streets to identify residents with disabilities or medical needs who depend heavily on electricity and making home visits, and PG&E itself has programs in place to fund backup chargers and hotel vouchers.
But vulnerable residents say electricity is their lifeline, and despite these efforts, there is still no system in place to support them in the event of a blackout.
“The degree of need has not been taken into account and is not factored into this policy,” Genis said.
Berkeley is the birthplace of the independent living movement, but residents say it still lacks the resources needed to respond to emergencies. Photo by Fran Osborne
The gap was clear to him when he began considering evacuation plans.
“I can’t imagine going to a friend’s house. Most of the houses have one or two stairs,” Genis said in a phone interview. “Sleeping on the couch is out of the question. I’m tall, and the couch is low compared to the wheelchair.” If the power goes out, charging the wheelchair can’t be done easily; if the battery is completely depleted, it can take 12 hours to charge.
“Working with personal attendants is really important,” he added. “We’re always trying to stay in touch, and we know that cell phones are a way to do that. If someone’s cell phone battery dies and you can’t get in touch… when you add the risk of a fire or earthquake to that, it’s a real concern.” (Thousands of people in California also reportedly lost cell phone service during the blackout and were cut off from emergency alert systems.)
Genis knows that if that were to happen, he could afford a few nights in a hotel, if he could find one that was accessible — he has a job and is budget-conscious — but he also knows that many others who rely on electricity survive on nominal disability or Social Security payments and could face even more dire effects if another long-term outage occurs.
The city of Berkeley, which lost power to about 7,000 customers on Oct. 26, said about 100 residents are part of PG&E’s Medical Baseline program and is also home to a large disability community.
City officials said they made concentrated efforts to reach vulnerable people during the two power outages, which were imposed because of the heightened fire danger.
“We were in a situation where there was a risk of wildfire and people would have difficulty evacuating in the event of a disaster,” Chacko said.
In response, the city of Berkeley launched BEACON, a network of local organizations and individuals that provide services to people with what the state and federal governments call “access and functional needs.” City officials also created an internal task force and plan to reach out to 65 individuals that PG&E said it couldn’t reach in Berkeley.
“Over Saturday and Sunday, we started calling every single person,” Chacko said. “We sent out a team of staff to reach those who we couldn’t reach. We were able to reach every single person.”
Chacko said the city posted frequent updates about outages online and posted fliers in community centers telling people who needed medical equipment to call 311. The city’s website promoted places where people who use medical equipment could charge them, including libraries, the Berkeley Free Clinic and PG&E resource centers.
“As a result of our direct outreach efforts, we’ve been able to connect with families who didn’t know the extent of our help and who are incredibly grateful,” Chacko said. “The response has been left to the city, county and other agencies, which is incredibly frustrating, but at the same time, we can’t let the frustration stop us.”
“Power remains out in the Berkeley Hills. This is a dark view of our neighborhood. City lights illuminate the smoke drifting from the Kincade Fire.” October 26, 2019. Photo by Sharon Gamson Danks
But the city ran into trouble during the first outage when disability advocates and Twitter users criticized the city’s messaging, which repeatedly told disabled residents to “self-evacuate” or, if they couldn’t, to call 911. Hundreds of people criticized the city for appearing to leave disabled residents to fend for themselves.
During the second outage, the city changed the language it used in its messaging and further promoted available resources, but rather than wait for the government to provide help, some in the disability community took on the task themselves.
Local people with disabilities care for each other and for themselves
“There are already informal networks of disability activists helping each other,” Claire Wright said.
The lights are part of a “mutual aid” effort by Oakland-based Disability Justice Culture Club and sponsor Power to Live, connecting people who need help during power outages with people who can give them something.
Wright spoke with Berkeleyside last week while juggling calls with people who had requested his services.
“We have volunteers on the phones who do two things,” she says. “The triage people, who are all disabled, speak directly to disabled people who request help so they know they’re talking to someone who will empathize with their situation. And then we have a resource team, many of whom are able-bodied. We let them know a request is coming in and they will research it if necessary or find resources if needed.” There is a related effort to raise funds online for these resources.
The Oakland-based group hopes to expand its reach as widely as possible, but as of last week it had received only two requests from Berkeley.
Meanwhile, other activists remained busy in the city throughout the blackout.
John Benson, who for many years ran the Berkeley nonprofit Easy Does It wheelchair repair service, distributing new tires and answering emergency calls around the city, no longer works there, but his old customers still have him on speed dial.
“I carry a battery pack with an inverter so I can open my power doors,” Benson told Berkeleyside last week. She also received requests to plug in wheelchairs and air mattresses to charge them during recent power outages.
Genis said those supplies could be lifesaving but are hard to come by.
“The size and cost of spare batteries to support healthcare workers who need oxygen is several thousand dollars,” he said, “far more than most people on a fixed income can afford, and there are only a limited number in circulation.”
During the outages, PG&E opened resource centers where residents could charge their devices. The Berkeley Center was only open during the outage in late October. Photo: Natalie Orenstein
Many of Benson’s former clients depend on electricity to keep expensive medicines refrigerated or to run ramps and mini-elevators in their homes.
“A lot of quadriplegics use air mattresses that inflate and deflate in certain areas,” Benson says, “which is very common in the disability world, but when the power goes out, the mattress deflates and you’re lying on a metal frame. There are a lot of things that able-bodied people don’t even think about.”
Because people with disabilities have such a wide range of needs, Benson said, creating a flexible volunteer group like Wright’s may be the most effective way to prepare. A few years ago, Easy Does It worked with the city of Berkeley to develop a disaster plan, he said. That plan included creating a list of residents willing to make a “buddy call” in an emergency and training volunteers to make those calls, he said.
“If they lose power for a few hours, we’ll actually go to their house with extra supplies,” Benson said.
At the University of California, Berkeley, which lost power in both outages, Karen Nakamura helped create information sheets for residents with disabilities to prepare for various disasters and emergencies. Ms. Nakamura, an anthropology professor who runs the Berkeley Institute on Disabilities, has created information sheets on things like how to charge a wheelchair and which air purifier to buy.
During the outage in early October, Nakamura told KQED that the disability community has been sounding the alarm about emergency preparedness for years, but he said the response from PG&E and local governments to the outage was “chaotic.”
For many Berkeley residents, disabled or not, the power outage was the final push they needed to prepare “buy-it-now” bags and stock up on flashlights.
“I took the time and energy to pack a duffel bag full of medical supplies, a few days’ worth of clothes and an extra wheelchair charger,” Genis said.
Genis, the climate resilience researcher, said he doesn’t blame PG&E for shutting off the power itself, despite criticism from everyone from state governors to social media users. He sees the outages as a response to a larger problem that PG&E only partially caused.
“Wildfires are caused by a combination of poor forest management, poor maintenance of electrical infrastructure and climate change — severe droughts, hotter heatwaves, stronger, drier Santa Ana winds. We need to do some of this (power outages) as a mitigation strategy, but we need utilities and cities and we need everyone else to be inclusive and look at what people with disabilities really need,” he said.
PG&E is running a pilot program to provide funding to local independent living centers, which can distribute hotel vouchers and charging equipment. In Alameda County, Community Resources for Independent Living (CRIL) of Hayward is participating. A PG&E spokesperson declined to disclose how much funding has been provided so far because the final contract has not yet been signed. Ron Harrog, executive director of CRIL, said the organization has received 10 battery units with solar panels so far, and that another 10 that were intended for CRIL have been redirected to the Kincade Fire area and are working with the county to distribute them.
Genis said it’s a good program, but it’s not enough.
“The framework is in place, but the funding is not,” he says, but he is hopeful that awareness is growing.
“I think people realize this is a big problem because of the scale and scope of the outages,” he said. “We’re going to have to put a lot of effort into distributing batteries and chargers, training people and getting outreach systems in place over the next year.”
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