Community health centers seek backup power sources amid more frequent outages

Extreme weather was sometimes the culprit, but so were planned safety outages and rolling blackouts, when a utility cuts power during times of excess demand, like during a heat wave.

The 2017 Tubbs Fire, which killed 22 people and destroyed 5,600 buildings, was already a stressful time at Alliance Medical Center’s clinic here, as workers who picked grapes in the nearby vineyards streamed into the nonprofit community health center with burns, symptoms of smoke inhalation, and other crises.