Aged care facilities well prepared
illage, Nuriootpa and Abbeyfield Aged Care Facility, Williamstown were all well prepared when it came to last week’s power outage on Wednesday night.
Mr Lee Martin, CEO of Tanunda Lutheran Home (TLH) said they were lucky enough to have three generators on site, producing enough power to run lights, computers and their kitchen during the night.
The biggest issue TLH faced was that their lifts weren’t working, so 24 residents were left on the second floor.
“We had a tonga line of meal trays going up the stairs into residence rooms,” laughed Mr Martin.
Mr Martin explained that whilst they needed to move things around, like making sure fridges are plugged in to the right power socket, overall they were ‘okay’.
Four years ago a generator was fitted into the new building of TLH, with another new generator installed seven months ago.
“This certainly made a big difference,” said Mr Martin.
“I’m still so grateful to the staff here for going that little bit extra supporting residents. Some did enjoy candle lit dinners.”
Administration Officer at Abbeyfield Aged Care Facility, Ms Lyn Venning, laughed and said, “We just took it as an adventure.”
Ms Venning explained that they were well prepared and have policies and procedures in place to deal with these types of emergencies.
Abbeyfield Aged Care Facility were equipped with LED lights, a small generator, and spare batteries around, but like other nursing homes, faced their small challenges.
This included their phone outages leaving some family members on the outside worried and out of contact.
“We’re in the process of getting a new, larger generator before Christmas and the bush fires hit,” said Ms Venning.
“It’s just unfortunate we didn’t have it yesterday, but overall we were fine!”
Mr Phil Schmaal, CEO of Barossa Village said the blackout overall was ‘not too bad’.
Barossa Village experienced no flooding due to the rain, with the 2010 floods prompting them to have good maintenance and always have clean gutters.
Mr Schmaal explained that they introduced a generator into the Barossa Village residency only a couple months ago.
However this has already proved to be a great help, especially when providing residents with hot meals last week.
For the full story see this week’s edition of The Leader.
