With the onset of a record-breaking Sept. 6 heat wave in LA, power outages in Eagle Rock homes forced residents to endure heat exhaustion and temporary displacement. One resident Valerie Ozeta said that she was hospitalized after her power went out in the afternoon.
“By the time I realized, I already had heat exhaustion just from moving around in the heat,” she said. “I went to the hospital, and I stayed there for 10 hours.”
Ozeta said she had been anticipating a heat wave early in the summer and feared its potential effects.
“The pattern for LA is late summer heat,” Ozeta said. “Given that, I was really concerned that there would be a heatwave and that there could have been power outages, so I tried to be ready.”
Eagle Rock resident Tye Quintana said she was caught off guard by the heat wave. Quintana said she has lived in Eagle Rock her whole life but has not experienced heatwaves such as this one.
According to Quintana, she saw no news coverage of the power outages. She said she works as a caretaker for her mother, who has severe asthma, and had to rent a hotel room in order to provide the safest option.
“We spent $450 that we did not really have the money for,” she said.
Quintana said she knew of cooling centers that were open throughout the city in order to provide air conditioning, but said the centers were not accessible to those without vehicles such as the elderly or low-income residents of Eagle Rock. She said in the future she would like to see the city provide transportation to cooling centers.
Quintana said that her concern for other elderly people in their apartments during the outage grew since many rely on breathing machines.
“It’s unfortunate for the low-income people because something as simple as 24 hours can be so devastating,” Quintana said.
The LA Dept. of Water and Power spokesperson Ellen Sheng said the pattern of rising temperatures has been apparent for many years.
“Specifically, the 2017 heatwave was very memorable,” she said. “This [Sept. 6] heat storm proved to be difficult due to the temperatures being persistent in the triple digits.”
According to Sheng, the heat wave caused a 6-day period of persistent heat. She said there is a common misunderstanding among residents about the suspected cause of the outages.
“It’s the inability for our equipment to cool down, not blackouts,” she said. “It’s not that there’s so much demand on the system that you don’t have supply, it’s the overuse and overheating on our system.”
Sheng said that within two days, there were approximately 6,000 out of the DWP’s 1.4 million customers that were affected by the outages. She said that although the number of outages caused an increase in the time it took the DWP to respond to calls, they were being proactive and diligently working on fixing the outages.
“Our crews were out there working hard,” Sheng said.
Sheng said there are precautions residents should take when preparing for and experiencing heat waves. According to Sheng, residents should keep windows open to prevent the heat from accumulating, refrain from cooking and generating excess heat, have backup batteries and to set their air conditioning to 78 degrees so as not to overwork it.
Sheng also said she encourages community members to sign up to receive outage alerts on the LA DWP website and to look out for events including air conditioning giveaways to low-income residents.
“We really do need to start being prepared for heat,” Sheng said.
Contact Addison Wieseler at wieseler@oxy.edu
