A woman’s death when her life support cut out amid a power outage has prompted more safeguards for vulnerable people during unplanned blackouts.
Gloria Shae, 80, was found collapsed on the floor where she had been trying to reach her bottled oxygen during a blackout in the Dubbo area, in central west NSW, on May 8.
Brian Shae said his mother was a registered life support customer with Origin Energy and Essential Energy.
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The blackout had occurred just after 5am.
He said the company did not contact him to let him know there was a power outage in the area.
“I could have been there”
“If there was some sort of automated system that sent out a text message, I could have been there in 30 seconds,” he said.
Shae said his mother was registered so the family could have more reassurance, but there is nothing in place to notify next of kin in the event of a blackout.
While emergency services arrived about 15 minutes after his mother was found and restarted her heart, Shae said she was already brain-dead.
Essential Energy said the unplanned power outage occurred about 5am when a member of the public reported sparks from a transformer on a power pole.
“To ensure public safety, Essential Energy remotely de-energised the local network,” a company spokesperson told AAP.
“A field team was dispatched to the site and undertook repairs so that power could be restored as safely and quickly as possible.”
The power company said supply was interrupted twice for “short durations” and fully restored about one hour after the fault was first reported.
“It is the nature of unplanned outages that they occur without notice and are of an unknown duration,” the spokesperson said.
The company encouraged any customers who rely on a continuous power supply to operate medical equipment to seek advice from their medical practitioner and “have contingency plans in place”.
“But how could an 80-year-old lady who has woken up out of a deep sleep (and) short of breath manage to go out (and) start a generator?” Shae asked.
Health Minister Ryan Park described the death as a “terrible tragedy” and said he spoke with NSW Health and also encouraged energy companies to look into ways they could better support vulnerable customers.
“These type of tragic events are an opportunity, to be quite blunt, to learn about what we can do better to support vulnerable customers,” he said on Wednesday.
“I believe there is an opportunity here for energy companies to do better and I will be encouraging them to have a look at that.
“If there’s anything that we could have done differently, we will look at that.”