When the tornadoes spawned by last month’s Hurricane Milton hit Vero Beach and knocked out power to thousands of residents and businesses for several days, many people rushed out to buy portable generators from the big home improvement stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s.
“We had a real run on them a couple of weeks ago right after the tornado,” said a Home Depot employee. “We sold a lot – basically everything we had in stock. We’ve been able to restock since then.”
But, as those who already owned even the biggest, costliest generators could tell those shoppers, just having a generator is no guarantee they will have power if the electricity goes out – or that it will stay on without incident for the entire time that it will take all those Florida Power & Light crews to restore normal service.
The most notable generator problems in Indian River County in the wake of the storm may have been those of the Cleveland Clinic Indian River Medical Center.
“Our generator at the behavioral health facility did catch on fire and we were able to source another generator to keep the facility running,” said Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital Vice President and Chief Medical Officer Richard Rothman.
“We did lose one air handler. Our team was able to bring another generator in and use two of our three air handlers to keep things running,” he added.
“We know there was a lot of commentary related to cancer services,” Rothman said, referring to the storm. “We did lose power to all of our ambulatory sites, secondary to the storm.”
But he said on the Saturday after the storm, “we opened our cancer center and we performed nearly 100 radiation therapies and our nurses and our caregivers came in to support all of our patients who needed chemotherapy over the weekend.”
In another scary story that could have had a tragic ending, a family of island residents went to bed the evening of the storm happy that a whole-house generator was supplying emergency power, but was rudely awakened at 4 a.m. when the carbon monoxide alarm system went off. The fire department was called and detected a flaw in the way the generator had been hooked up, which resulted in exhaust fumes from the generator being blown back into the house.
“We had a propane generator for about eight years and it had always worked fine, but then shortly before Milton struck, we switched over to natural gas,” said Suzanne Bertmann, a resident of The Seasons off Wabasso Road. “It didn’t seem to work as well.
“The lights were flickering, and when the loud carbon monoxide alarm went off, we opened all the windows and doors, and my husband stayed inside to wait for the fire department while my daughter and I and our dog went into the car in the rain.”
Bertmann, who said she heard from several of her neighbors that the same thing happened to them, said they will now move the generator farther away from the home and try to make sure the exhaust fumes will be blown toward the property’s pond, not the house. She urged everyone to get a separate carbon monoxide monitor if no such device is built into a home security system.
“It may have saved our lives,” Bertmann said.
Many other generators at private homes or businesses failed to turn on or stay on, or didn’t turn on properly, for different reasons. At the first bridge game after the storm at the Oak Harbor community, the conversation at just about every table centered around the various failures of generators that were supposed to have kept the lights on in people’s homes after the storm.
One resident of adjoining Grand Harbor who has a generator was going to be out of town in Las Vegas on a previously scheduled trip, but upon hearing the news of an impending storm, she invited several of her neighbors who did not have generators to store their perishables in her refrigerator and provided them with access to her house.
That did not work out too well when her generator never turned on – even though it had been inspected and serviced just two days before the storm. Apparently, the generator had suffered water damage; the power outage was preceded by a torrential rainstorm that dumped about 5 inches of water on the area just before the electricity went off.
She said to make sure the generator works the next time that it will be needed, she will cover the equipment with an impermeable hood-type structure and raise it about 6 inches off the ground to keep water out.
Water damage is one of many reasons generators may fail and actually did fail around our county. All generators, regardless of brand, size or fuel type (some work on propane or natural gas, some on gasoline, and some on diesel), have batteries and once a battery goes dead, no generator will turn on.
“Generators basically work like cars,” the Home Depot assistant manager explained. “You’re probably better off starting it up once a month, to make sure it still works, and recharge it. Run it once every month – that’s our advice.”
Running out of fuel, whatever the type, is another obvious reason that generators fail, as is asking a generator to do too much and take on tasks it wasn’t designed for. Salespeople advise prospective buyers that smaller generators costing less than $1,000 are designed to maybe power a couple of small refrigerators. They will fail very soon if they are asked to power several rooms, or even a medium-size air conditioner.
A full-size home generator, depending on features, capacity and other variables, could cost $20,000 to $30,000. Fuel tanks and fuel, maintenance and installation will push the cost considerably higher. A small 5 kilowatt generator is suited to power one appliance like a refrigerator and perhaps a few lights. A 25 kW generator that may power a 3,000 square foot house will run closer to $20,000, with another $5,000 for installation.
Home Depot can sell maintenance plans for technicians from an associated local company to carry out monthly maintenance, but such contracts are often not cheap. Maintenance contracts are also available from other dealers and electrical contractors.
Generators are suitable only for single-family residences, not for condominiums. However, one condo Homeowners Association (HOA) is now looking into acquiring a generator for its clubhouse only, so residents will have a place to store some of their perishable foods in the clubhouse fridge, and perhaps get away from the oppressive heat in their apartments to enjoy a few hours of air-conditioned comfort while socializing with neighbors.
Electricity was out for four days or longer in some areas of Vero Beach. At the Park Shores condominiums in Indian River Shores just south of the town hall, residents organized a party where everyone brought his or her defrosting meats and cooked them on the grill to share.
“It was actually great fun,” said one resident. “We managed to make the best of a bad situation.”
Staff Writers Lisa Zahner and Mary Schenkel contributed to this report.