A recent article “Power Outage Causes Damage to Local Man’s House,” printed in the Jan. 20 edition of the Cook County News- Herald, highlighted the experience of one citizen with mobility challenges during the outage. Upon follow up with various individuals, agencies and an investigation of the individual’s account with the Sheriff ’s Office, it is now known that the claims relayed were not totally accurate.
It was clarified that the man’s pipe burst prior to the outage, the day before, not as a direct result of the power outage. As well, a review of call transcripts to the Sheriff ’s Office reportedly requesting help from a deputy or transfer to the shelter location, did not occur the way it was communicated to the paper, however the Sheriff ’s Office, Emergency Management and Public Health & Human Services are taking this unfortunate misprint as an opportunity to put in place measures to assist vulnerable citizens should an incident like this ever occur again.
“The Sheriff ’s Office staff in no way ignored request for help from a citizen, which unfortunately is how it was initially communicated,” said Sheriff Pat Eliasen. “However, this situation has brought forth an opportunity to identify measures for vulnerable members of the population and for our public safety agencies to be aware of who may need assistance during emergencies that may have significant challenges.”
The development of a Vulnerable Citizens Registry is being explored by Cook County to allow citizens to self-register to make public safety providers aware of medical, mobility or cognitive concerns in the event of a community emergency. Details of how to register will be coming soon.
The Sheriff ’s Office, Emergency Management and county quickly mobilized to respond to the community’s needs once they were made aware of the outage extending beyond a few hours, and delivered detailed instructions via multiple communication channels to the public to aid those in need. None-the-less, an Incident Debriefing & After Action Review, led by the Cook County Office of Emergency Management & Public Information, was held with all agencies involved following the outage on Jan. 12, to review emergency plans and identify opportunities to strengthen response and inter-agency relations in community emergencies.
Editor’s note: When it was learned of the plight of the victim an email was immediately sent to Valerie Marasco, Emergency Management director and information officer for Cook County. No response came back to the questions posed although it has been learned that Valerie did communicate the questions asked by the newspaper to the Sheriff’s Office. The following day Sheriff Eliasen was contacted and asked for information but he stated that an investigation was under way and had no more information. Sheriff Eliasen has confirmed that the victim, who is wheelchair bound and has diabetes, did call the Sheriff’s Office twice, once when the power outage first happened and a second time at 7:50 p.m., when he (victim) apparently thought he was calling for assistance to get to the Cook County Community Center for help.
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