Hospitals power outages

The most dramatic threat to shock treatment became known as the Berkeley ban. Ted Chabasinski, who had been subjected to electroshock as a child, organized a grassroots citizens movement in support of a referendum to ban ECT in Berkeley, California. After the proposition was overwhelmingly approved by the electorate, the psychiatric establishment, led by the APA, intervened and had the ban overturned in court. But the survivors could claim a partial victory—a so-called power outage of 41 days at Herrick Hospital, the city s only ECT facility, in the winter of 1982. 

Other applications — Supercapacitors show promise for critical-load operations such as hospitals, banking centers, airport control towers, and cell phone towers. The critical time between a power outage and the start of a generator can be bridged effectively by supercapacitors because they provide power within milliseconds to a few seconds after an outage. More detailed applications will be addressed in Chapter 8. 

Earthquakes have caused disruption of the services provided by essential facilities such as hospitals, emergency communications centers, and fire stations. For the functions of these facilities to be available in the post-earthquake setting, the structure must perform safely and key nonstructural components must be protected. In addition to these engineering approaches, emergency response planning is necessary to identify off-site lifeline systems that could be disrupted by the earthquake, because a facility may need backup systems and supplies to contend with outages to the region s water, power, and transportation systems. 

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