Power Company Turns Off Power on Woman's Breathing Machine

Firestreak

Firestreak

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CNN said:
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A 44-year-old woman who needed an electric oxygen pump to breathe died after an energy company cut the power to her home because of a $122 unpaid bill, her family claimed Wednesday.

Police said they had launched an investigation into Folole Muliaga's death, which happened within two hours of state-owned company Mercury Energy cutting power to her house Tuesday.

Mercury Energy's general manager, James Moulder, said the company was devastated by the woman's death and was conducting its own investigation to determine what happened.

Muliaga, a schoolteacher with four children between the ages of 5 and 20, had been off work since February with an illness and had fallen behind in her payments to Mercury, said Brenden Sheehan, a relative who provided a copy of the bill.
Relative says family warned company rep she needed machine

Six days before a Mercury Energy representative arrived Tuesday at the house to disconnect the electricity, she was $122 in arrears.

Sheehan said both Muliaga and her son told the technician she was dependent on the oxygen machine to stay alive and invited him into the house to see it. "Then he cut the power off," Sheehan told The Associated Press.

Muliaga began having difficulty breathing, became faint and then collapsed, he said. Paramedics were unable to revive her, and she was pronounced dead within two hours of the power being cut.
Spokesman says Mercury Energy 'simply unaware' of situation

Moulder expressed his "deep condolences" to the family, and said the company was checking reports that it had been warned Muliaga needed power for the oxygen machine.

"We were simply unaware that loss of electricity to the household was putting a vulnerable customer at risk," he said.

"More than one" disconnection notice had been sent to Muliaga's address over a six- to seven-week period, he added.

State Owned Enterprises Minister Trevor Mallard said there were reports the family had been warned about the overdue account.

"The correct authority to investigate this and sort out the facts is the police," Mallard said, adding the government would expect "full accountability" if the company was found to be culpable.
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http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/05/29/nz.lifesupport.ap/index.html

This is really fucked up and there should be measures in place everywhere to prevent this. Like when a hospital gives someone a breathing machine, the power company should be informed about it. Also the person needs a very good, powerful generator that can go for weeks cause if she dies in hours without power what would happen if there was an ordinary powerout? Hell my power was out 3 days a couple weeks ago thanks to a huge storm.
 
Firestreak said:
Also the person needs a very good, powerful generator that can go for weeks cause if she dies in hours without power what would happen if there was an ordinary powerout?
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Pretty much my initial thoughts on the subject.
 
i like this more ;p

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/05/30/japan.bathtub.reut/index.html

1M gold bathtub stolen from hotel
POSTED: 0628 GMT (1428 HKT), May 30, 2007


TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Japanese police are scratching their heads over how a gold bathtub worth 120 million yen ($988,100) and weighing some 80 kilograms was stolen from a hotel near Tokyo.

Staff discovered early on Wednesday that someone had stolen the tub from a shared bathroom for men on the 10th floor of the hotel in Kamogawa, by the Pacific Ocean.

But police said they found no signs that the heavy bathtub had been dragged out of the hotel.

"The door to the room had been locked with chains, but the chains were found cut off this morning," a police spokesman said.

"We really don't know how this happened at this stage. But what we can assume now is that more than one person was involved in this incident."

A similar bathtub in the hotel's shared bathroom for women is still in place, he said.

Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Copyright 2007 Reuters. said:
All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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lolSpacezHere
 
I would think something like that would have a battery back-up built in, just in case the power got disconnected somehow.

The situation sucks, but how could they expect to be getting free power forever? This whole thing could have been averted for only $122 dollars. You can make in less than a week that doing anything. Hell, her relatives knew about the situation, why didn't they pay the damn bill?
 
this is gonna sound cold and callous... but if you need electricity to live.. maybe you should keep up on your electrical bills? i mean, it is tragic, and goodness knows it shouldn't have happened, esp since the circustances were explained to the company but by your midlife you should know if you don't pay bills things get turned off. as far as a generator goes, if she can't afford a $122 power bill, how much do you think a gene would cost? several thou...
 
Blackchaoshero said:
this is gonna sound cold and callous... but if you need electricity to live.. maybe you should keep up on your electrical bills? i mean, it is tragic, and goodness knows it shouldn't have happened, esp since the circustances were explained to the company but by your midlife you should know if you don't pay bills things get turned off. as far as a generator goes, if she can't afford a $122 power bill, how much do you think a gene would cost? several thou...
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You can get a really good gas/diesel generator that can run several appliances for $300-500. I am in agreement with Pasquale though, why didn't her family members pay the bill? I can only assume that it is a relatively small family and perhaps they are all pretty destitute themselves. Otherwise, they share some of the responsibilty as well.
 
The invitation to come into the house can seem harmless coming from w/e members of the family, but the technician may have seen a potential threat awaiting him within or it's against company policy to put the company on the line by entering the property.

Not to say a small family like that is something to be afraid of, but when you're in someone's house, that's their domain... and I'm sure the tech has probably heard some zingers before from other customers who couldn't/wouldn't pay their bill giving him no reason to leave it going.

The comment on the generator, I concur. A life sustaining device should have some kind of backup or failsafe.

All in all it's a very unfortunate situation, but very avoidable and maybe in the future, pleas such as the family's can be reviewed by local government officials or authorized mini-investigators of such claims before the final power cut is delivered.

As far as the article goes, I probably missed something because I'm dead tired... Don't see anything in there about a husband or something of the sort, I wonder what will happen to the youngsters. :(

- Lec
 
Probably should have gotten law enforcement envolved. That electric service man sounds guilty of something. If anyone tells a electric serviceman someones life depends on him not cutting power, common sense should tell him not to do it.

Doesn't matter what events happened to lead up to the event. Its the cutting of power, when you were made aware that doing so would lead to a loss of life that is the mistake here.

I would think jail time for stupidity is appropriate, if only to make an example of supreme stupidity, and careless attitude towards human life.
 
Darkdante said:
Probably should have gotten law enforcement envolved. That electric service man sounds guilty of something. If anyone tells a electric serviceman someones life depends on him not cutting power, common sense should tell him not to do it.

Doesn't matter what events happened to lead up to the event. Its the cutting of power, when you were made aware that doing so would lead to a loss of life that is the mistake here.

I would think jail time for stupidity is appropriate, if only to make an example of supreme stupidity, and careless attitude towards human life.
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Whoever is taking care of this woman and didn't pay the bill should be found guilty. That guy has heard all sorts of people tell him reasons as to why their power shouldn't be cut, and I doubt it's the first time the "life or death" card has been pulled.
 
Pay the fuckin' bills. If I don't pay my bill, the power gets cut. Why should anyone else be different? There is state assistance, assisted living, all sorts of APPROPRIATE action her family could have taken to not cause this. If anyone is to blame, it's her care takers. Hell, I'd be willing to bet they didn't pay the bill because they were bankin' on them not turning the power off because of her. Blaming the power company is way past pathetic.
 
When your action directly causes the death of someone, you're held responsible, regardless of what side of the law you may think your on before the event. Them paying the bills did not cut the power, the service man did.

This is why you get the law involved before you do something as stupid as this.

I agree with everyone that they should have paid the bills. But you just can't go around cutting power because you arn't getting paid when doing so might cause a loss of life. There is more legal and ethical ways to go about doing so, and getting payment.
 
Doesn't it count as a preventable circumstance? I'm no legal eagle but I'd probably be shaking my head at the caretakers.

A bill's a bill, if you're put into a coma for 6 months you still have accounts attached to your name that are accruing debt. Providers don't - and in most circumstances, should never - know about your medical condition.

Also them notifying the technician on the day of disconnection is a bit late. Serious situations like this, the caretakers could easily have contacted a consumer accounts manager in the company and told them of the situation. I'm sure they can take special measures to ensure the power is never cut, and can gun down caretakers to pay the bill instead of the unconscious victim.
 
I have to say that this story is extremely fishy, and the media might be slaughtering the facts. At least as far as the US system is concerned, there is no way on earth that such a dependent patient would be at home with the capacity to be ambulatory enough to "collapse" as the story said she did. Home O2 delivery systems are not built to sustain life for this very reason. They are intentionally kept weak so that if they stop working, then by default you're not debilitated enough to get to a hospital so that you don't die if any one of a hundred thousand things happens to you out there. Bottom line is that oxygen-dependent...as in life dependent...people aren't found in homes where power can be cut off.

This is horrible, and I don't want to say the family was just using her condition for leverage to keep the power on and the man upstairs called their bluff, but this story doesn't make much sense as-is.
 
They were notified six weeks in advance that their power was going to be cut if they didn't pay the bill, and apparently didn't bother to tell anyone at the power company until the very day the power got cut. Plus the person they tell is the technician who comes to cut the power, who has absolutely no say in whether the power stays on or not.

If they had actually talked to the power company when they first went into arrears, I pretty much guarantee they would have worked out some sort of deal. I'm not sure if it's private or public utilities there in New Zealand, but either way something would have been done if these people had pursued the proper channels. Public utilities get government underwriting for cases like these, and private companies would cut a deal to avoid just the sort of bad press they're getting now.
 
Alright, the woman has 4 kids and lost her job cause of her illness. It doesn't look from the story as if there was a husband as he would have been mentioned. So a single mom with 4 kids and no job.

Now hell, I vote Republican, I don't consider myself a bleeding heart or a sympathizer for the lazy or deadbeats, but she obviously had real financial issues. Maybe she didn't pay her power bill because she couldn't afford to pay her power bill and there was nothing she could do to get out of the situation without being able to work.

Honestly there's no fucking reason the power shouldn't be kept on. Infact as far as I'm concerned, anyone with some critical medical device should get whatever power it requires free off of their bill. I don't mind paying a few cents extra for power to prevent people from freaking dying.

I"m not saying for sure it's the power company's fault, if there were measures she could have taken but didn't. You're all just assuming because you don't want to accept it's something that could never happen to you by reinforcing the illusion that we're all in total 100% control of our lives.

The reality is a person's life is worth more than $110. If nothing else try to get that out of this.
 
crookedmidget said:
Your heart is in the right place. I wonder how this would be implemented without a bureaucratic nightmare or some "Nanny State" law.

All in all, a heartbreaking tragedy.
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I'd like to be a judge from hell dealing with that case I'd sure rip that company a new one

capitalism at its newest low

if someone can't pay to keep the power that keeps them alive do you still just cut it off? is it the only legal way to let someone die? I never thought a loophole existed
 
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