It was the kind of news that made one think, “maybe I should buy a generator for the house, just in case.”
That just in case being the power being out for an extended time and the news was a study done by the University of Washington that showed Arkansas was among the hardest hit areas in the country in terms of extended power outages.
The other areas were Louisiana, central Alabama and northern Michigan, according to the study published April 29 in the journal Nature Communications.
It analyzed three years of power outages across the country but on a county by county basis from 2018 to 2020.
A county-level map of 8 plus hour power outages. Counties shaded in white lacked any reliable data.
Not every county in Arkansas had data but of the ones that did, Pulaski County was among the 16 in the state that had at least 35 power outages of more than one hour and seven outages of more than eight hours that occurred in the three years studied.
Joan Casey, an assistant professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences was inspired to do the work after being personally impacted by a long-term power outage.
“For me it was an inconvenience, but for some people it could be life-threatening,” said Casey, to Alden Woodsof the University of Washington news service. “If you had an uncle that had an electric heart pump, basically, his heart wouldn’t work without power. You could use a backup battery for eight hours, but after that, if you don’t have access to electricity, you have to go to the emergency room. This is a really dangerous situation.”
Part of the reason there’s been more power outages and more long-term outages is the impact of climate change on the severity and duration of storms.
The study found that heavy precipitation in a given area makes a power outage five times more likely. Tropical cyclones make a power outage 14 times more likely while hurricanes make power outages 52 times more likely.
“We look at weather reports and decide whether or not to bring an umbrella or stay home,” Casey said. “But thinking about being prepared for an outage when one of these events is rolling through is a new element to consider.”
The findings could serve another purpose as there’s new federal money to revamp the country’s electric grid, with greater attention paid to the areas most impacted by long-term power outages.
Nationally, between 2018 and 2020, there were more than 231,000 power outages lasting more than an hour and of those, 17,484 stretched at least eight hours, a duration that is widely viewed as medically relevant. Meaning that public health could also be improved with a better electric grid.
“Any time we can identify another factor that we can intervene on to get closer to health equity, it’s exciting,” Casey said. “I think we’re going to see tremendous change, especially in the way our energy systems are set up, in the next couple decades. It’s this huge opportunity to get equity into every conversation and talk about what we’re going to do to make two decades from now look different from where we are.”
Power outages a public health threat
Power outages a public health threat
Power outages a public health threat
It was the kind of news that made one think, “maybe I should buy a generator for the house, just in case.”
That just in case being the power being out for an extended time and the news was a study done by the University of Washington that showed Arkansas was among the hardest hit areas in the country in terms of extended power outages.
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The other areas were Louisiana, central Alabama and northern Michigan, according to the study published April 29 in the journal Nature Communications.
It analyzed three years of power outages across the country but on a county by county basis from 2018 to 2020.
Not every county in Arkansas had data but of the ones that did, Pulaski County was among the 16 in the state that had at least 35 power outages of more than one hour and seven outages of more than eight hours that occurred in the three years studied.
Joan Casey, an assistant professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences was inspired to do the work after being personally impacted by a long-term power outage.
“For me it was an inconvenience, but for some people it could be life-threatening,” said Casey, to Alden Woods of the University of Washington news service. “If you had an uncle that had an electric heart pump, basically, his heart wouldn’t work without power. You could use a backup battery for eight hours, but after that, if you don’t have access to electricity, you have to go to the emergency room. This is a really dangerous situation.”
Part of the reason there’s been more power outages and more long-term outages is the impact of climate change on the severity and duration of storms.
The study found that heavy precipitation in a given area makes a power outage five times more likely. Tropical cyclones make a power outage 14 times more likely while hurricanes make power outages 52 times more likely.
“We look at weather reports and decide whether or not to bring an umbrella or stay home,” Casey said. “But thinking about being prepared for an outage when one of these events is rolling through is a new element to consider.”
The findings could serve another purpose as there’s new federal money to revamp the country’s electric grid, with greater attention paid to the areas most impacted by long-term power outages.
Nationally, between 2018 and 2020, there were more than 231,000 power outages lasting more than an hour and of those, 17,484 stretched at least eight hours, a duration that is widely viewed as medically relevant. Meaning that public health could also be improved with a better electric grid.
“Any time we can identify another factor that we can intervene on to get closer to health equity, it’s exciting,” Casey said. “I think we’re going to see tremendous change, especially in the way our energy systems are set up, in the next couple decades. It’s this huge opportunity to get equity into every conversation and talk about what we’re going to do to make two decades from now look different from where we are.”