LAKEPORT — As Lake County residents made their way through the fifth consecutive day without electric power from Pacific Gas and Electric Company, some of the county’s most vulnerable populations were becoming increasingly fatigued.
A large number of seniors have been utilizing local senior centers since power was turned off to nearly every PG&E customer in Lake County on Saturday.
Lakeport Senior Center Director Jonathan Crooks said the center has had “record” numbers of guests during the shutoff. And at other centers, like the Highlands Senior Center in Clearlake, some reports estimated nearly 1,000 had visited in one day.
Hot coffee and lunches, device charging and conversation are among the reasons seniors have been flocking to centers like these around Lake County during massive power outages that have affected millions.
At the Lakeport center on Wednesday, chicken and sausage jambalaya was on the menu for lunch, and the regular Wednesday bingo game was being set up for roughly 50 people. Seniors sat at folding tables, discussing the latest news over cups of coffee.
As temperatures dropped this week into the low 30s in some parts of Lake County, and a “code blue” warning for nearby Sonoma County residents was issued, urging those without heat at night to find warm places to sleep, the cold became, for many seniors, yet another difficulty associated with the PG&E outages.
Steve Kadin, a driver for the center’s Meals on Wheels program, said he has been saddened to see the shutoff-induced conditions some of the elderly he delivers to have been living in. Making his daily rounds this week, he said he’s found seniors—many of whom are disabled and live alone—sleeping in their cars to keep warm. Kadin has handed more than a few meals over to seniors through their car windows, because they refuse to go into their cold homes.
“I have an average of seven to eight meals on a delivery,” Kadin said. “Out of seven yesterday, I had to knock on the windows of three cars—elderly people sitting in their cars because their houses are cold. They’re sitting in their cars with the heat on, and that can be dangerous.”
Kadin has sleep apnea—a sleep disorder characterized by labored, erratic breathing—and hasn’t been able to use his electrically-powered continuous positive airway pressure machine to treat the condition since Saturday. “My wife’s been waking me up at night, moving me,” he said.
Kadin estimated he’s lost about $300 of groceries to the lack of power to keep things cold. Beyond that, he noted, “I haven’t taken a shower in five days.”
“I don’t think it’s right,” Kadin said of PG&E shutting down power deliberately. He and his wife are planning to move to Nevada in the near future, in search of freedom from fires and massive blackouts.
Upper Lake residents Josette and Stan Kanter, who sat at a table in the senior center’s dining area, said they’ve been cold each night since the shutoff began. They have a backup generator, but it’s not enough to power their heater. “We’ve been piling up blankets,” Josette said.
Josette, who, like Meals on Wheels driver Kadin, uses a CPAP machine to breath during the night, said she hasn’t been able to power it since Saturday.
“I have a CPAP machine but I can’t use it,” she said. “I don’t sleep because I’m worried I would not wake up.”
Cathy Balsiger, a 65-year-old woman living alone in Lakeport, said she has been visiting the senior center for coffee and “human contact” during the shutoffs. For herself and other seniors, the loss of daily routines due to the shutoffs has meant more alone time, coupled with stressful uncertainty about where to get fuel, medications and food.
“We all need contact with everybody,” Balsiger said. She noted PG&E has not successfully sent her updates on the shutoffs, despite the fact that she has a working landline phone and is a PG&E customer. “It makes you feel like if something were to happen, how would you even know? Say another fire were to come through.”
Patricia James was at the senior center Wednesday with a group of clients of People Services, a nonprofit based in Lake County that provides care and opportunities for the differently abled. James said critical medications have been difficult for some of her clients to refill, as only one pharmacy was currently open in Lakeport.
At the senior living park where James lives, supplemental oxygen machines have been a major concern. With no generator power provided by the management of the park, James said she and the other residents have had to fend for themselves. Over half of the residents use oxygen, she estimated. Several have gone to the hospital since Saturday’s shutoff began.
Luckily, the darkness was likely to pass soon, at least for a while. Lake County received a weather “all clear” from PG&E early Wednesday morning before reports of utility trucks checking lines began coming in. PG&E did not specify when power would be turned back on in Lake County, but noted it hoped to restore electricity to everyone within a maximum of 48 hours from the weather “all clear.”
