When Your Life Depends On Power, The Crunch Hits Hard

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When Your Life Depends On Power, The Crunch Hits Hard

March 12, 2001 By Tracy Vedder

KING COUNTY - There's no end in sight for our power crunch, and more rate increases could be on the horizon.

That's not good news for anyone. But for people like Bunny and Kris Garthe, whose lives depend on power, the prospect of even higher bills can be terrifying.

Measuring out pills is the morning routine at the Garthe household in Kent. Bunny Garthe mashes and mixes a potpourri of medications for daughter Kris, who has scleroderma, an auto-immune disorder.

"It hardens the skin on the outside especially," says Kris Garthe, "and in my case, systemic scleroderma, it's on the inside as well and it hardens your organs."

'We Have To Have Electricity'

Kris can't swallow. She hasn't eaten anything in two years. She gets all her nutrition and medicines through tubes.

And the machines that regulate those tubes must run all night long.

"We have to have electricity," says Bunny Garthe. "She wouldn't be able to survive. There's no other way for her to get her food, her nutrititon."

The High Cost of Keeping Warm

Scleroderma also affects how the body regulates temperature. So for Kris, being cold isn't unpleasant, it's painful.

"I think it's sort of like arthritis and your joints and stuff just hurt, hurt a lot," says Kris. "It's almost like you're gonna get frostbite."

The cost of keeping Kris warm and fed skyrocketed with the cost of power. The Garthes' most recent electric bill was $171.32. The gas bill is just as high.

"It's a little frightening," says Bunny, "to open both the gas and the electric bill and see them in the hundreds of dollars."

'You Can Only Cut Corners So Much'

As a middle-school teacher and single parent, Garthe makes too much money to qualify for energy assistance and too little to afford the rising costs. So she and her daughter conserve where they can.

They turn off the computer when they're not using it. They keep lights to a minimum. But Kris' life depends on a warm house and an electric pump. And her mother will not compromise that.

"You can only cut corners so much, and her health is more important as far as I'm concerned," says Bunny.

Washington state legislators in both the House and the Senate were working on legislation this session to help families like the Garthes pay higher power bills. It didn't make it as far as a committee hearing in either house, but advocates hope to bring the issue up again next year.

http://www.komotv.com/news/story_m.asp?ID=9720

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 14, 2001

Answers

Bad as high utility bills are, an extended power outage would obviously be far worse for those like this unfortunate girl. I wonder if they have a generator.

In my modest town (pop. 10,000), there are at any given time about a dozen people whose very lives depend upon electricity to power their life-support equipment. Respirators, that sort of thing. None of them have ever seen fit to invest in a generator or other means of producing their own electricity. Every time there is an outage these folks call upon the fire department to haul a genset to their homes. Trouble is, the FD is not only volunteer, but is undermanned and not wealthy - they have five small gensets. This means that at least five firemen have to be put in a rotation to supply power to these folks. Needless to say, power usually goes out at a time when the FD is quite busy, like blizzards, hurricanes, etc., and has need of both equipment and personnel at other sites.

Granted, some of these individuals are not financially well off, but most have ample means and could easily afford a small genset. They simply refuse to do so, prefering instead to rely upon others for their own well-being.

I do not understand their mindset in the least, except to say that it reaffirms my belief in some people's innate shortsightedness and selfishness.

-- thinkahead (a@a.a), March 14, 2001.


This just ticks me off to no end. I know there are people who cannot afford a genny. But 99% of the people on a respirator or O2 concentrator managed the high cost of cigarettes all of their lives. Most would smoke now if they could. How many generators do you think they could have bought in a life time of smoking? They KNOW THE SYSTEM will take care of them. And when the system gets overloaded listen to them cry and critize. Medicare, Medicade, etc should tell them that they must get a genny and to start saving their money for one. Give them a year to do that. I am a retired respiratory therapist and at one time owned a home care service. After a while your compassion begins to get strained, when you see the new van in the driveway, but they call you in the middle of the night because the power is off. These people never even look at their medicare statements. It doesn't bother them at all that they are spending $500 or more per month of tax payers money most of it from their own stupid lifestyle. Taz

-- Taz (jhara2197@aol.com), March 15, 2001.

Taz - how true - Its kind of odd how the handicapped are placed on a pedestal because we are conditioned to sympathize with there plight no matter what the cost.

Picture a country with limited resources. Do you suppose the handicapped individual will receive all the financial support they need for a happy, comfortable life. No they wouldn't.

Today, in the former Soviet Union, that scleroderma patient wouldn't survive very long as they have regular power outages throughout the country. Power outages that were unthinkable here in the United States until a few months ago.

Do you suppose that when our population attains 400 million and the globe has reached 8 or 10 billion a few more unthinkable things could probably happen. As long as this situation continues to progress we aren't guaranteed anything in life and that includes uninterrupted electric.

-- Guy Daley (guydaley@altavista.com), March 15, 2001.


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