In 2019, Terry Crammer, then the Chief of Disaster Services for the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Agency, hired P4P project director Eric Cote to serve as the project consultant for a comprehensive, multi-year emergency power resilience initiative.
The project was designed to ensure that LA County and its municipalities, along with its electric utilities and critical healthcare facilities, were employing best practices in minimizing threats to emergency power and accelerating response when threats arose during power outages.
As part of the initiative, Cote conducted a census of the emergency power systems in 80 LA County hospitals, capturing data on 271 generators. The census revealed an alarming number of seriously outdated generators, facilities with no source of redundant emergency power and facilities with limited onsite fuel storage capacity. EMS Agency officials were alarmed by the findings and enlisted Cote’s help to develop a series of new protocols to address these vulnerabilities.
The protocols include accelerated emergency power status reporting and an emergency power system vulnerability assessment to help hospitals identify vulnerabilities that may not be detected during required generator testing. Accelerated emergency power threat reporting will help expedite EMS Agency response, which may include the deployment of temporary generators and the initiation of evacuation support protocols. Early warning will also accelerate service providers’ response and, when possible, hasten prioritized power restoration. The LA County initiative represents the most advanced work to date by a state or local jurisdiction to identify vulnerabilities in hospital emergency power systems and develop rigorous new protocols to address these weaknesses.
The new protocols were introduced in the EMS Agency’s Healthcare Facility Emergency Power Resilience Playbook, published in October 2023. The EMS Agency provided training resources and a table top exercise to introduce the Playbook and its new protocols its 80 hospitals. Today, Cote is working with other jurisdictions interested in launching their own initiatives to boost emergency power resilience for hospitals and other critical health care facilities.