Karen Glaser faced a critical situation when a power outage plunged her Arizona neighborhood into darkness for 16 hours, leaving her paralyzed son, David, without the life-sustaining medical equipment that relies on electricity.
David Glaser, 27, has been paralyzed for six years following a severe motorcycle accident in 2020. The accident left him with critical injuries, requiring extensive medical equipment to survive.
On Saturday afternoon, around 2:30 p.m., a widespread power outage in Coolidge, a city south of Phoenix, caused David's medical equipment to cease functioning. The outage affected over 4,000 customers in a city of about 20,000 people. Temperatures in the area climbed above 110°F over the weekend.
Karen Glaser described the terrifying hours as her son's medical bed deflated and the machines regulating his body temperature went dark. "The first thing is what am I going to do with David?" she told AZFamily. "His bed was off. None of the backup systems came on. So, I lost everything right away - the pulse oximeter, his oxygen levels."
As the temperature inside her home reached 100°F, Glaser resorted to placing wet rags on her son's body to keep him cool. She also manually suctioned saliva from his mouth to prevent him from choking. The Coolidge Unified School District opened a cooling center and distributed ice, but Glaser could not leave her son's side due to his condition and dependence on equipment.
"I was a sitting duck here, and I had no way out," Glaser said. "When they were giving out ice, I couldn’t get there."
Before her phone battery died, Glaser contacted the city, as her home was on an emergency list for prioritized power restoration. She was initially assured power would return by 5 p.m., but the estimated restoration time was repeatedly pushed back. Power was finally restored Sunday morning.
The Western Area Power Administration, the agency responsible for electricity in Coolidge, stated that the outage was likely caused by a lightning strike during a storm on Saturday afternoon.
Glaser, who has consistently updated her son's GoFundMe and maintained a Facebook page about his progress since his accident, expressed her fear of a repeat event. "You have no idea how scary that is," she said. "I can’t have this happen again."
