To: Administrators, Directors and Staff
From: Elaine McManis, Division Director, Health Facilities & Emergency Services Division
Re: After Action Report on the April 6th Xcel Power Outage in Six Counties
On Saturday, April 6, Xcel Energy preemptively turned off 600 miles of power lines to reduce wildfire risk in six counties: Boulder, Broomfield, Douglas, Gilpin, Jefferson and Larimer. Xcel said that the proactive shutoffs affected about 55,000 customers.
We understand that Xcel sent out voice messaging to impacted communities shortly before the outage, which many customers did not receive. As soon as we were notified about the intended shut-off, we alerted licensed healthcare providers via our provider messaging system. After power was restored, we heard from a number of providers that were frustrated with the lack of advance notification.
We’d like to share the takeaways to ensure consistent services in the event that this happens again in the future:
- Facilities are responsible to have individualized emergency plans for their clients, based on their individual needs.
- Encourage your clients that have DME to have extra batteries and/or a car charger available. Keeping extra concentrator batteries fully charged will give your clients oxygen for longer if you lose power. If possible, keep enough fully-charged batteries to last a couple of days.
- Talk with clients’ oxygen supply companies about a back-up emergency supply that does not require electricity such as oxygen tanks and cylinders. Make sure your clients know how to set up and use their back up emergency oxygen supply.
- If you have clients that rely on several different types of electrical assistive devices, he/she/they may want to look into purchasing a generator. Temporary use generators can be purchased at most hardware and department stores (such as Lowe’s, Home Depot, Sears, and similar stores)
- Some facilities did not receive our message until Monday morning: We use our provider messaging system to connect with the individual(s) listed as the COHFI account manager of our Colorado Health Facilities Interactive (COHFI) provider messaging system. We recommend that the COHFI account manager should be someone who can retrieve these messages seven days a week.
- We were unable to reach some providers we called: On Saturday, April 6, we received information from our Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response that there were a number of individuals calling their local EMS agencies because they had durable medical equipment, including oxygen concentrators that did not work without power.
- We attempted to reach out to home health providers, but found that several were closed, and we had no alternate emergency contact information. We encourage healthcare providers to add that information into your COHFI account information under the field “alternate contact. We will explore technology options for sending out emergency messages via cell phones.
Here are some resources that can help home health providers prepare their clients during emergencies:
For residential providers, we’d like to remind everyone to have emergency plans in place if you cannot provide generator power and need to evacuate medically compromised residents.
Finally, since all emergencies start locally, we want to make sure that you all have the appropriate local contact information, should you need to reach out for emergency assistance:
For concerns related to the ability to care for residents, patients or clients, please reach out to Melanie Roth at 720-291-5929 or Melanie.Roth-Lawson@state.co.us.
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