Blackout outreach seeks to empower the powerless
Staff writer
The elderly woman’s tears didn’t come until her power — knocked out by a recent storm — suddenly clicked back on after four hours.
During that time, homebound and alone, the eastern Kansas resident had been hanging, in suppressed panic and growing perspiration, over whether she’d get electricity back for a medical device she needed to use.
In cases like this, “you can just hear the weight lifted off,” said Alison Lee, an Evergy Kansas customer service manager who calls medically vulnerable customers during extended power failures .
During repeated phone calls with the woman, Lee couldn’t always give her a firm estimates of when power would be restored. The severity of the storm made that impossible. But Lee could tell her one thing: She had not fallen off the radar. The company knew she was out there.
That reassurance often is everything, Lee said.
She has spent six of her 20-plus years with Evergy on outreach in the medical customer program. It gives priority — or enhanced — communication to those deemed at risk by an Evergy physician in an power failure.
As several destructive storms have rolled over Marion County in the past two weeks that stranded woman’s plight was familiar to vulnerable residents — the elderly, the chronically ill, those dependent on oxygen, dialysis, or cooling equipment — who have experienced repeated power failures of as long as eight hours or more.
Everyone, even medical patients, needs an emergency plan, professionals in county emergency management, home care, and power said in interviews.
County emergency manager Marcy Hostetler has a mantra: assess your needs ahead of time, have a plan, practice your plan, and research your resources.
She urges residents to ask themselves before a storm is threatening: “What devices do I need to take with me? Do I have a to-go kit? Can I go to the nearest health care facility for assistance? What happens if my medications get wet? What are the emergency procedures for ordering my prescriptions?”
Peni Ens, a registered nurse and director of Marion County Home Care, said she considered storms “prescheduled” events in which potential for power failures can be known in advance.
“Make sure everything is charged if a storm is coming,” she said. “When I hear of weather, I get my devices charged. … Hopefully everyone still has a battery-operated radio and flashlight.”
Many medical devices require electricity batteries may not be able to provide. Some officials suggest having a generator if a device is required 24/7.
Some towns with generators in their city buildings allow residents to plug in there. Marion city administrator Brian Wells said, for example, that in an extended power failure, the city would open its city building as a shelter, and residents could use generator power available there.
Also in the “do it ahead” category for Evergy customers with verifiable medical needs is to apply for the company’s medical customer program, said spokesman Courtney Lewis, said.
Residential customers who depend 24/7 on medical devises like oxygen delivery or ventilators can apply with their doctor’s input. (Applicatons are on the company website.)
Described as an “enhanced communication” program, not a priority service program, it offers a dedicated phone line and personal tracking during power restoration and proactive outreach by medical customer service agents like Alison Lee.
All calls from these customers bypass automation limbo.
“When someone calls our lines, they’re always going to get a person,” Lewis said.
Evergy has about 1,000 medical customers and requires more than just a rubber stamp from a doctor to qualify, Lewis said. Those in need must work with their doctor to qualify ahead of time, not when they have no power.
Lee suffered a power failure while on overtime duty staying in touch with medical customers this past weekend.
She, too, had to have a backup plan and operated out of her mom’s house while taking and making calls to affected customers.
Often medical clients expect to have priority power restoration, but the very nature of a downed line, she said, means working along that line to get power going again. Clients have to take their turn. Her job often entails calling customers proactively before their familiar lament, “My neighbor’s on, how come I’m not?”
That can mean reporting to them the incremental progress of workers, she said.
“So the branch on the line has been removed… and maybe we had to have someone else additional called out, like the tree service. Just being able to let them know that it may not just be a flip of a switch and even giving them an understanding of how many other people might be out,” Lee said.
People face a gamut of emotion in power outages everyone faces in a power failure — even anger. That’s amplified with medical patients. So she’s had plenty of earfuls from upset customers. But, she said, there’s nothing quite like the good feeling of hearing a totally relieved customer’s tears of relief.