Who Gets Power?
I
started this week off in the dark. On Sunday
afternoon, as California was pummeled by a
climate change- and El Niño-fueled atmospheric
river, we lost power at our home, along with the
rest of our neighborhood and much of our town.
It wasn’t restored until the early hours of
Tuesday, which meant no light, no heat, no stove
or oven (we recently went electric), and (gasp!)
no Internet for nearly 36 hours.
Some
1.4 million PG&E customers across California
lost power during the storm. Like many, I was
annoyed at the inconvenience. I felt anxious
about how it might disrupt hard-fought toddler
bedtime routines, not to mention childcare on
Monday morning. I worried about the food slowly
warming in the fridge and temperatures slowly
dropping in the bedrooms.
Still,
I know, my family had it pretty good. We could
afford to replace our groceries if they went
bad. (They didn’t.) We had friends nearby with
back-up power sources who would take us in if
our house got too cold. And we knew that utility
crews were on site assessing the problem and
doing what they could to get the lights back
on.
Not
all Americans can say the same. Research shows
that when outages occur, poorer communities
linger longer in the dark. Specifically, a 1
decile drop in socio-economic status correlates,
on average, to a 6
percent increase in power outage length.
It’s not entirely clear why this is so, but
experts think the delay likely relates to
location: Lower-income households are more
likely to be farther from critical
infrastructure, which utilities prioritize for
restoration, as well as in older neighborhoods
with aging infrastructure that may require more
extensive work to get up and running again.
What
we know for sure is that the type of extreme
weather events that can lead to power outages —
whether atmospheric rivers in California,
hurricanes in Florida, or snow storms in New
England — are occurring more frequently. It is
past time to step up support for vulnerable
communities when they experience outages, and to
rethink our priorities when it comes to getting
the lights back on.
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