GenSan deaths blamed on Mindanao brownouts
SOLAR POWER, such as that being produced by these panels owned by a power firm in Cagayan de Oro City, offers one solution to Mindanao’s debilitating power crisis that authorities want to solve through more coal power plants. BOBBY LAGSA/INQUIRER MINDANAO
GENERAL SANTOS CITY—Brownouts in Mindanao are turning deadly, at least to the family of a man who died following an asthma attack at the height of an outage that prevented him from using his nebulizer.
Nenita Sombrio, 53, resident of Dadiangas North village, said her husband, Ignacio, 54, would have still been alive had he been able to use his nebulizer during an asthma attack on Tuesday.
“He was unable to use his nebulizer because of the brownout,” said Nenita. “He would have been alive if not for the brownout,” she said.
A nebulizer is an electrical device that uses oxygen, compressed air or ultrasonic power to break up medicine into mist that can be inhaled by a patient. It is commonly used for the treatment of symptoms of cystic fibrosis, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other respiratory diseases.
Ignacio’s case is the second that is being blamed on the power outages that have been plaguing Mindanao since February.
In this city, the daily outages last for hours except on holidays and weekends.
A few weeks earlier, Cristituta Ferrer, 46, a resident of Tambler village, also failed to use her nebulizer during an asthma attack.
Her family blamed her death on her failure to use her nebulizer because of the brownouts.
According to medical journals, people having asthma attacks face a high risk of cardiac arrest.
Amid the deaths being blamed on the brownouts,
Mayor Darlene Custodio reiterated her appeal to factories and offices to use their standby generating sets to ease the load of the local power utility.
The return of the power crisis in Mindanao has brought back an old clamor from power distributors in areas that host electric generating facilities for increased power allocation.
But an official of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), who did not want to be identified for lack of authority to speak on the matter, said raising the allocation of some power utilities would automatically reduce the load being received by others.
Rolando Linaac, chief operating officer of the Iligan Light and Power Inc. (Ilpi), said the city should be getting more power as it hosts hydropower facilities Agus 5, 6 and 7, which accounts for a total dependable capacity of 167 megawatts (MW).
Linaac said Iligan’s power demand is about 37 MW but it only receives 15 MW under the load curtailment scheme being imposed by NGCP due to the decline in water level in Lake Lanao, which runs the Agus hydropower turbines.
Similar calls for preferential treatment were also raised by Lanao del Norte, which hosts Agus 4, and North Cotabato, host to geothermal plants.
