For the first time in the company’s history, Arizona’s largest public utility preemptively cut off power at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, April 22 to thousands of residents around Flagstaff due to wildfire risk, impacting families who rely on power used for medical equipment for high-risk newborns.
The planned power outage, referred to as a Public Safety Power Shutoff, is expected to last anywhere from 12 to 24 hours, a spokesperson for the Arizona Public Service Co. told KNAU. The outage is still ongoing as of this article’s publishing.
The outage was initially expected to impact approximately 5,800 customers in the Flagstaff area, according to an APS press release from Tuesday. A subsequent release from the utility company raised that number to 6,000.
Danielle Hale is a nurse in Flagstaff who works with families whose newborn babies spent time in the local Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. While she said she doesn’t live in an area affected by the outage, she has patients who do.
In the hours before the power was shut off, Hale told KNAU she reached out to those patients to let them know about what might happen.
“Some of them come home [from the hospital] with, like, feeding pumps and oxygen, and they use the concentrators for the oxygen at home and things like that,” said Hale. “So, of course, they're hopefully prepared because [the power] can go out whenever. But if it's something planned, I like to give them a heads-up if I know about it.”
Some of her patients have newborns that rely on ventilators and portable oxygen tanks, she explained, and therefore need as much advance notice about power outages as possible. Hale said she wished APS had communicated more thoroughly in the hours leading up to the shut off.
“I am very happy that they're coming up with new ways to hopefully lessen the wildfire risk,” she said. “But I think … it should've come out somewhere else. I just happened to be looking at emails and saw an article from [Arizona] Daily Sun.”
Hale added she didn’t have any patients whose kids could be classified as in critical condition, but that several depend on medical equipment which requires power.
APS sent out a press release about the potential for a shut off at 2:54 p.m. on Tuesday and another on the morning the outage occurred.
The utility company has meteorologists who predicted 60 mph winds in neighborhoods near Flagstaff and Grand Canyon National Park, said Yessica del Rincón, an APS spokesperson.
Once the wind subsides and it's safe for crews to begin their inspection work, APS crews will have line workers, bucket trucks, a drone inspection team and a helicopter examining power lines in the area, to ensure it’s safe to turn them back on.
Del Rincón said she understood that any time without power can be “an inconvenience” to APS customers.
“We try to provide as much advanced notification as possible, but with a rare and extreme weather event such as what we're seeing today take place, our team had to be as nimble as possible to make sure that we are executing our plans,” said del Rincón. “We did provide advance notification to customers yesterday, and have been providing in the weeks leading up to this, and in the past years, educational information stressing the importance of being prepared.”
She suggested customers enroll in the APS Medical Care Program, a resource the company has available for customers who are on life-sustaining medical equipment. It provides rate-payers with additional notifications and information from APS.
Del Rincón said APS employees went to the Flagstaff Mall to provide customers with water and ice during the shut off for as long as supplies last.
She said the company was setting up similar resources in the Mormon Lake and Valle communities, and that the city of Flagstaff was using its Murdoch Community Center to provide similar resources.
