Storm Éowyn: CF patient spent extra week in hospital while waiting for power to be restored
Among the many people affected by the Storm Éowyn power outages, cystic fibrosis sufferer Gypsy Robinson from Longford was unable to go home as she needs to use an electric nebuliser. Picture: Jonathan McCambridge/PA
A patient with cystic fibrosis spent almost a week longer than necessary in hospital because she had to wait for her electricity to be restored after Storm Éowyn.
Gypsy Robinson, 22, is on the ESB’s vulnerable customer register. She has queried why it seems this group is not a priority.
She needs to use an electric nebuliser twice a day, and the heating system in her house in Newtownforbes, Longford, is powered on electricity.
“I went into hospital on the second Friday in the new year, and I was up for two weeks, but I had to stay on probably an extra five days because they knew I had no electricity at home,” she said.
The power went out at her home during Storm Éowyn and only came back late last Friday.
Her grandmother Hilary also lost power in her nearby home.
“I wasn’t here luckily the day it happened, but I was so worried too about Granny and everybody,” she said.
Gypsy rang the ESB on Tuesday to find out what was being done for people on the register.
“That was the one thing I couldn’t wrap my head around, why wasn’t that looked at? I know there’s a lot of people who are struggling,” she said.
A key issue was the lack of heat.
“I got myself a pellet stove, they’re energy efficient but they run off electricity. You can’t use them unless you have electricity,” she said.
“The whole reason I got myself a pellet stove instead of a normal stove — which I could have used for heat with no electricity — was because they are so much better for your health. There is no ash or open smoke.”
She is frustrated the stove proved “just useless” in a crisis, despite having cost a lot of money.
Communications still remain challenging, although she said: “That’s the least of my worries now.”
She drove away from the house to find a spot with clear signal to speak with the .
A trip to the supermarket was the next stop for an expensive replacing of items she had stocked up on before her hospital stay.
“I spent a good hour and a half earlier just getting rid of so much food. I was cleaning the whole fridge as well, there’s bacteria, so that was fun,” she said.
She speculated about how much food waste there might be elsewhere too, especially for big families. She said:
However, she is grateful she was not in the house as Storm Éowyn hit because her health might have suffered.
The ESB says during an unexpected outage vulnerable people calling customer service are given priority in the queue for responses. They will receive a text or phone call with local updates.
It advises people dependent on life-supporting electrical equipment to have battery back-up and a place to move to if the outage goes on for long.
At one point, 625,000 people were without power nationally.
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