Southwest Care clinic, police say vaccines destroyed by generator vandalism
Sep. 6—Police are trying to find out who disabled a medical clinic's exterior breaker box, turning off power to the building and ruining a number of vaccines.
Someone broke the lock on an electrical box belonging to Southwest Care clinic, 901 W Alameda St., early Tuesday morning before turning off its power and then disabling its generator, according to Santa Fe police. Nothing appears to have been stolen, and no vandal seems to have broken into the clinic.
Lori Gravelle, the independent clinic's director of compliance and quality, said staff arrived Tuesday morning to find they were without power. Refrigerators containing vials of vaccines and medications are armed with alarms to alert employees when temperatures drop below a certain degree, but that had not yet happened, she said.
Still, the clinic was forced to turn away patients until it could regain power and work with suppliers, manufactures and officials from the state Department of Health to determine vaccine viability, Gravelle said. Clearance to resume patient care was given by state health officials shortly after 3 p.m. Tuesday, she said.
Nicholas Generous said he brought his 4-month-old daughter into the clinic at 8 a.m. Tuesday and was told initially it could be weeks before the clinic could provide vaccines again.
Gravelle said 30 doses of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and four doses of polio vaccine were destroyed. State health officials said 475 COVID-19 bivalent vaccines and seven monkeypox vaccines were initially in question, too, but were later cleared as safe.
No one seems to know the motive for the crime, and Gravelle said she couldn't speculate whether it was a random act of vandalism or one motivated by opposition to vaccines.
Generous said he was appalled at the crime, which forced an unknown number of patients to either wait for vaccines or seek help elsewhere.
"Vandalism is not victimless, and as a community we should not tolerate the behavior," Generous wrote Tuesday in a letter to the editor about what happened. "I grew up in Santa Fe and returned after college to build a future here. I urge our community to recognize the real harm caused by such acts and unite to prevent them."
Deputy police Chief Ben Valdez said it's too early to say what the motive for the crime may have been. Officers plan to review video footage Thursday to see if they can identify anyone and what the person intended in disabling the clinic's power.
"It could have been a lot worse," Gravelle said, adding the clinic will install additional security features to protect against something similar happening again.
"We do everything we can to make sure we're safely housing medications and vaccines," she said.
Generous said he wasn't able to reschedule his daughter's appointment Wednesday until talking with a clinic manager.
"They're resuming vaccinations, but it wasn't communicated to the staff," he said, adding felt bad for clinic staff and patients.
"I'm very happy with their service; I'm just worried about this vandalism," Generous said. "I have the ability and resources to get other vaccines, but I worry about all these other families because I know they serve a lot of low-income patients, too."
