Healdsburg’s Alliance Health Center Gets Backup Power System for Natural Disasters

This just happened last month, and it’s even more relevant now: The Alliance Medical Center next to Healdsburg Hospital on University Avenue has installed a backup solar-power system that will allow the clinic to stay up and running during wildfires and other emergencies, even if the power goes out. It’s part of a nationwide movement to fortify community health centers in this age of natural disasters, funded by a nonprofit called Direct Relief. The Associated Press has the story: “The 2017 Tubbs Fire, which killed 22 people and destroyed 5,600 buildings, was already a stressful time at Alliance Medical Center’s clinic here, as workers who picked grapes in the nearby vineyards streamed into the nonprofit community health center with burns, symptoms of smoke inhalation, and other crises. Then, the power went out. Work at the center, about 70 miles north of San Francisco ground to a halt. Staff couldn’t access electronic health records or fill prescriptions. The refrigerators used to store medications stopped working, destroying $30,000 worth of vaccines. ‘We’d be fine if we never had to live through that again, but the reality is we will,’ said Alliance CEO Sue Labbe. ‘But we’ll be prepared now.’ In May, the clinic — which serves 13,000 patients per year, mostly underinsured and uninsured essential workers who labor in the wine country’s fields, hotels and restaurants — turned on a new rooftop solar and battery storage system. Dozens of solar panels, sprawled across the south- and west- facing sections of the clinic’s green roof, generate enough power for the center’s clinical areas, the server room that supports the electronic records, and the refrigerators that preserve crucial medications. Batteries stacked in metal closets in the building’s back parking lot can keep things running for up to 15 hours after the sun goes down. The humanitarian aid organization Direct Relief paid for the $500,000 system as part of its Power for Health initiative. The six-year-old program was created to help community health centers, serving the country’s most vulnerable patients, confront more frequent power outages from extreme weather and fickle grid systems. … Labbe said power became even more of an issue after the Tubbs fire, since the utility started preemptively shutting it off when the winds picked up to prevent wildfires from igniting. Then there were the weather events themselves — not just fires, but winter rainstorms. ‘It came to when, not if, the disasters are coming fast and furious,’ she said. ‘This is the new normal if you’re in an area prone to natural disasters.'” (Source: Associated Press)