Iolan Glen Searcy appreciates a new service that would alert first responders if he were in trouble.
“I’m on oxygen 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Searcy, 86. “I can’t be without it.”
He is exactly the kind of person Pam Beasley, Emergency Management Services director, wants to help with Allen County’s Vulnerable Needs Registry.
“We’re putting together a database of people with special needs,” she said. “Then, if severe weather, a power outage or any kind of problems puts them at risk, we quickly can provide assistance.”
People other than those with medical concerns are encouraged to register.
“We also want daycare providers and nursing and care homes in the database,” Beasley said, noting that if a chemical spill occurred or an anhydrous ammonia tank ruptured near a daycare crowded with youngsters, “we’d know who was at risk and could respond immediately.”
Registration is made easy by dialing 211 or logging onto www.helpmekansas.org. Beasley is available at 365-1477.
The program is statewide and sponsored by United Way and Kansas Emergency Management Agency, with local emergency managers having lead roles within their communities.
SEARCY has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and has needed oxygen to help him breathe for five years, full time the last two years.
An oxygen concentrator carries the oxygen to his and wife Alberta’s living and bedrooms. A backup tank provides up to four hours of oxygen and is kept handy in the event a power outage silences his concentrator. He has small one-hour tanks to carry when out of the house.
“This program will be important to me,” Searcy said. “If the power goes out, I don’t want to wait and worry about it being restored.”
That’s a relief to wife Alberta, 85, as well. “I get pretty fidgety when something happens to his oxygen,” she said.
