NJ Spotlight published the following article on 2/24/2014. To read the full article, click here.
Bill Would Make Power Restoration at Hospitals a Priority
Tom Johnson | February 24, 2014
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, there were 251 healthcare facilities left without power, including 38 acute-care hospitals — in some cases, for a week or more. All told, one-third of nursing care and assisted living facilities lost electricity, the average outage lasting five days, according to industry officials.
New Jersey electric utilities say they give priority to restoring power to those facilities during extreme weather, but apparently that was not always the case in the fall of 2012, according to Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula (D-Somerset).
“Some of the hospitals were forgotten when there were power restorations,’’ said Diane Anderson, director of emergency operations for the New Jersey Hospital Association. In one case, a hospital in Ocean County was still without power when the rest of the community already had electricity restored, she said.
To remedy that problem, a bill, A-1071, as begun moving through the Legislature to help ensure hospitals and other critical facilities get power back as soon as possible during such emergencies. “Supporting this bill would ensure this won’t happen again,’’ Anderson said.