Power Company Turns Off Power on Woman's Breathing Machine

Karihkinz said:
Would she really be living alone with four children? And for that matter, when the electrical tech came to the house to shut it off "the woman AND HER SON" invited him inside to see the machine. The son was home. I'm assuming the oldest. So... Did he just do nothing as his mom couldn't breath?
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No idea. They only tell a small part of the story and it's likely overdramatized a bit. Seems like the reporter just got the smallest amount of information and ran with it.
 
Hmmm I want to know some specifics. Like how over due was the power bill. How much money was owed. At what point does the power company get to draw the line? So do people who have health concerns not have to pay their power bills? I want to hear the full story hear, if the family missed like a payment or two w/e, but if they missed alot well... There is a limit to they sympathy I can dole out on any given day. Bills need to be paid if you want to enjoy the benifits said services render. Necessary or not. And why the fuck where they sitting around thinking hmmm I cant breath? What did all the sons do or the women herself. 911 exists for a reason.
 
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Kerowynn said:
Did you ever think that maybe she didn't realize that she would die if she didn't have oxygen for a couple of hours?
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Kero, I think you're in the right about arguing about the deserving of death part, but saying things like this are a bit messed up. Not realizing you're going to die without oxygen? Comon...
 
After looking up some followup articles and audio, she died of a heart attack. While at first this might sound bad for the fam, it explains a lot. She wasn't dependent on the oxygen, but without it she was probably at a fiftyfold risk for having a heart attack. That explains why there was a 2 hour lag. The family has a limited education. The health care system tends not to blame people with limited education for bad moves, such as not going to the hospital immediately when the power went out. A lot of people are probably going to say that's bullcrap, but social and education levels are a very complicated thing when it comes to healthcare. Instead of blaming them, healthcare tends to blame itself when people make dumb health decisions like the fam did that day, since it was the healthcare system's jobs to explain to the family these issues.

Even if the family was being too overdramatic with the power company, the stress of the power outtage plus the lack of oxygen to cover the spread almost surely induced the heart attack.

The electric company admitted wrong by undergoing some samoan apology ritual from what I've read. They're paying for her funeral and entering into compensation talks.

Editing: This is going to draw some flak I'm sure, but according to some of these articles she was on the breathing machine for respiratory trouble tied to her obesity. The breathing machine was indeed not intended as a life support. As such, the claim that she "needed" the oxygen to live was false, but that doesn't change the almost sure fact that the power cut led to her heart attack and that without such cut, she would be alive.
 
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Cecilee said:
This is going to draw some flak I'm sure, but according to some of these articles she was on the breathing machine for respiratory trouble tied to her obesity. The breathing machine was indeed not intended as a life support. As such, the claim that she "needed" the oxygen to live was false, but that doesn't change the almost sure fact that the power cut led to her heart attack and that without such cut, she would be alive.
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That is very interesting, one of those little bits of facts that mainstream media does not like to include because it disagrees with their slant on the story.
 
Cecilee said:
Editing: This is going to draw some flak I'm sure, but according to some of these articles she was on the breathing machine for respiratory trouble tied to her obesity.
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Her own damn fault, case closed.
 
The company's actions still killed her. Why she was ill has no bearing on that claim; it only gives people a social out to claim that she deserved it, which is ridiculous. No one deserves to die of a heart attack brought on by respiratory distress. People just don't have opinions like that, do they? We don't know why she was obese. There's a huge genetic obesity component to hawaiian and samoan obesity. Probably rivaled only by Aleutians. She also had heart and lung problems, probably atherosclerosis and COPD. It doesn't matter if she was a 500 pound smoker with an o2 feed in one hand and a lit cig in the other. Doesn't matter if her family might have overestimated about how much she needed the oxygen. Clearly the fam was right. She had maybe a one in a thousand chance to die if the power stayed on. She had maybe a one in a hundred chance of dying when her oxygen got cut. She died. You will probably die of a cause you could have prevented and delayed too. It's how we go out these days. Her death wasn't her fault.

She was a mother and teacher. No one's that heartless.
 
Cecilee said:
It doesn't matter if she was a 500 pound smoker with an o2 feed in one hand and a lit cig in the other. Doesn't matter if her family might have overestimated about how much she needed the oxygen.
.
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If these things are true she put herself in the situation to begin with making it at least partly her fault. Don't get me wrong I don't think she deserved to die, but I am tired of how todays society has to blame their problems on everyone else. If your kids are fat its fast food and societys fault. If some one shoots people and plays video games they blame video games. If she was a 500 pound smoker she put herself in the situation to begin with. I realize these aren't the actual facts but you seem quick to blame the electric company no matter what she did.

Its to bad she had to die and it could have been avoided in many ways 1 being the electric companys fault.
 
Well I did open by saying that the original article was shenanigans to the behalf of the power company, which turned out to be true. While I favor the family, as does the power company apparently, I would only have blamed the lady for her eventual death. Her inevitable self-inflicted fate was pre-empted by someone else's actions that directly led to her death. If you attempt to rob someone with heart failure from past cocaine abuse and they die from the shock of having a knife pulled on them, your charge is homicide. In the same way, someone's negligence killed her. She didn't kill herself.
 
Cecilee said:
Her inevitable self-inflicted fate was pre-empted by someone else's actions that directly led to her death.
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Her and her families falure to pay the bills caused these actions. They had to know at some point if you don't pay your bill the power will get cut off. Actions have Consequence's be ready to accept them when they come. She also could have gone to the hospitle or next door to plug it in. She and her family didn't take any steps to save her either.

I wish she wouldn't have died as I am sure you do(and the power company). But you can't place 100% blame on the power company. I don't think lack of education was the problem if she is a teacher like you said.
 
It's true that she was a teacher, but she was an incapacitated teacher. Bedridden. Heart problems. Lung problems. Limited mobility. Now reduced oxygen supply. She probably wasn't able to make sound decisions at the time. Her family had no education, but they tried what they knew to do. The family did contact the power company to plead their case. The family tried to keep the power on. They were unable to pay the bills, so debate as to whether they should have paid the bills or not is truly moot. Bad decisions were made by everyone, but ultimately it was the power company with the power to do something. With social power comes responsibility to act on behalf of the less powerful. Almost all large companies have systems in place to keep services going to those that need them but who can't pay for them. If you are charged with powering a population, a certain responsibility comes with that. At some point your product gets so important that you stop just selling a product and start having to be people's advocates.
 
I do feel the power company is partly responsible. If she knew that she needed the machine to stay alive why did she not go next door and not call 911 until she was having a heart attack? They did plead with the person turning off the power that she needed it to stay alive.

I believe that both sides are to blame for what happened. I wish that things would have worked out differently.
 
;_;
Son Ietitaia Muliaga, 20, said she had been up and walking around the family's Mangere, Auckland, home - the long hose of the oxygen machine trailing behind her.

Then, as she sat in her favourite chair in the living room, the machine's alarm shrilled and the hiss of oxygen to her lungs went silent. A Mercury Energy contractor knocked at the door and, Ietitaia says, told them he had just cut off the power. According to family, Mrs Muliaga, 44, pleaded that she be given a chance to pay her outstanding power bill. Ietitaia said the contractor replied: "I'm just here to do my job." Then he left. A little later, Mrs Muliaga told her son: "Look after your little brother and respect your Dad." "I think she knew ... but she didn't tell us, she didn't want to worry us." Minutes later, her vision started to blur and she felt dizzy and faint, then she collapsed. An ambulance was called but resuscitation failed and she died. Medics had not been called earlier because the family did not realise the seriousness of the situation. And she was not taken to a neighbour because, as a large woman, they could not carry her.

--http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/dailynews/4078471a10.html

298848.jpg

Her youngest son shows clear indication of the very common samoan genetic component to obesity. Any time you have an obese child under 10, genetics usually dominates the discussion, contrary to popular opinion that the fam is overfeeding.

This story gets sadder as the puzzle gets finished. There's another article here about Samoan culture teaches people to respect authority decisions and to not challenge them. I dun wanna read any more ;_;

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10443390
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10442847
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4082826a11.html
 
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Makelith said:
Kero, I think you're in the right about arguing about the deserving of death part, but saying things like this are a bit messed up. Not realizing you're going to die without oxygen? Comon...
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It's entirely possible with people that are ill but don't necessarily realize that the lack of oxygen will push them over the edge. I am assuming she's on regular oxygen since it doesn't mention a respirator.

Do you think that smokers on oxygen realize that they are in reality risking their lives every time they remove their oxygen to smoke a cigarette? Maybe they know, but it doesn't always register that such a small thing would be fatal so quickly.

Cecilee said:
After looking up some followup articles and audio, she died of a heart attack. While at first this might sound bad for the fam, it explains a lot. She wasn't dependent on the oxygen, but without it she was probably at a fiftyfold risk for having a heart attack. That explains why there was a 2 hour lag. The family has a limited education. The health care system tends not to blame people with limited education for bad moves, such as not going to the hospital immediately when the power went out. A lot of people are probably going to say that's bullcrap, but social and education levels are a very complicated thing when it comes to healthcare. Instead of blaming them, healthcare tends to blame itself when people make dumb health decisions like the fam did that day, since it was the healthcare system's jobs to explain to the family these issues.

Even if the family was being too overdramatic with the power company, the stress of the power outtage plus the lack of oxygen to cover the spread almost surely induced the heart attack.

The electric company admitted wrong by undergoing some samoan apology ritual from what I've read. They're paying for her funeral and entering into compensation talks.

Editing: This is going to draw some flak I'm sure, but according to some of these articles she was on the breathing machine for respiratory trouble tied to her obesity. The breathing machine was indeed not intended as a life support. As such, the claim that she "needed" the oxygen to live was false, but that doesn't change the almost sure fact that the power cut led to her heart attack and that without such cut, she would be alive.
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Thanks for the added info, it helps to clear some things up.

duncanrun said:
I do feel the power company is partly responsible. If she knew that she needed the machine to stay alive why did she not go next door and not call 911 until she was having a heart attack? They did plead with the person turning off the power that she needed it to stay alive.

I believe that both sides are to blame for what happened. I wish that things would have worked out differently.
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I agree, however I have a bit of sympathy because some people have a harder time than others. If I were to sit on my ass the rest of my life and eat nothing but twinkies and quarter pounders all day long I'd still never be truly obese because of my body type. Not everyone is that lucky so I do have some sympathy for people that are prone to this problem.

Cecilee said:
;_;
Son Ietitaia Muliaga, 20, said she had been up and walking around the family's Mangere, Auckland, home - the long hose of the oxygen machine trailing behind her.

Then, as she sat in her favourite chair in the living room, the machine's alarm shrilled and the hiss of oxygen to her lungs went silent. A Mercury Energy contractor knocked at the door and, Ietitaia says, told them he had just cut off the power. According to family, Mrs Muliaga, 44, pleaded that she be given a chance to pay her outstanding power bill. Ietitaia said the contractor replied: "I'm just here to do my job." Then he left. A little later, Mrs Muliaga told her son: "Look after your little brother and respect your Dad." "I think she knew ... but she didn't tell us, she didn't want to worry us." Minutes later, her vision started to blur and she felt dizzy and faint, then she collapsed. An ambulance was called but resuscitation failed and she died. Medics had not been called earlier because the family did not realise the seriousness of the situation. And she was not taken to a neighbour because, as a large woman, they could not carry her.

--http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/dailynews/4078471a10.html

298848.jpg

Her youngest son shows clear indication of the very common samoan genetic component to obesity. Any time you have an obese child under 10, genetics usually dominates the discussion, contrary to popular opinion that the fam is overfeeding.

This story gets sadder as the puzzle gets finished. There's another article here about Samoan culture teaches people to respect authority decisions and to not challenge them. I dun wanna read any more ;_;

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10443390
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10442847
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4082826a11.html
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Sad situation. :(
 
duncanrun said:
Her and her families falure to pay the bills caused these actions. They had to know at some point if you don't pay your bill the power will get cut off. Actions have Consequence's be ready to accept them when they come. She also could have gone to the hospitle or next door to plug it in. She and her family didn't take any steps to save her either.

I wish she wouldn't have died as I am sure you do(and the power company). But you can't place 100% blame on the power company. I don't think lack of education was the problem if she is a teacher like you said.
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QFFT. This sums up my opinion of the matter entirely. She was a fat slob who could not be bothered taking her own life in her hands. Her own personal actions whittled away her very existence, created a dependency and an unwillingness to fend for themselves to the point that the loss of electricity for a couple hours ended her life. That is pathetic I have no sympathy and pitty for her.
 
Direwolf said:
QFFT. This sums up my opinion of the matter entirely. She was a fat slob who could not be bothered taking her own life in her hands. Her own personal actions whittled away her very existence, created a dependency and an unwillingness to fend for themselves to the point that the loss of electricity for a couple hours ended her life. That is pathetic I have no sympathy and pitty for her.
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Kind of funny how you've already decided on the story of her life with so little information. I agree that people should take more responsibility for themselves but you really have no way of knowing the whole story.
 
The last link explains her actions, which were in-keeping with her culture.
The picture of her son pretty much proves that her obesity stems from the oft-evoked but hardly ever true "fat gene" claim. It was true in this case. While genes dominate only 5% of the US's obesity, this is a slam dunk here. Honestly and truly, you can look the data up. In cases where children under the age of 10 are obese, genetics dominates 70% of their weight. Americans are used to scoffing at fat people because fat Americans really don't have these conservation genes at any significant frequency. It is a rare thing to find such a legitimately fat person in America or Europe. It is not in Samoa.

To understand her actions, you have to know her culture. To understand her weight, you have to have some demographic knowledge. Your own and my own mindset, as is, does not apply well to her. Take care in that.
 
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