What to do in a long power outage

The first hour

Take a breath. Almost nothing in the next hour is urgent, and the few things that are can be done in the dark with a phone torch.

Look outside first. If your neighbours have lights, the fault is inside your home and the consumer unit is worth checking. If the street is dark, it is the network, and someone is already on it.

• Switch off anything that was drawing heat when the power went: oven, hob, heaters, iron. Power comes back all at once, and it comes back when nobody is watching.
• Leave one lamp switched on so you know the moment it returns.
• Keep the fridge and the freezer shut from now on. Every opening costs about ten minutes of cold.
• Report the fault to your network operator, not your energy supplier. The number is on your bill. It is worth writing on paper now, because looking it up needs the thing that is off.

Light that is not your phone

A phone used as a torch is a phone that will not be a phone by morning. One cheap battery torch per person, kept somewhere everyone can find without light, solves the whole problem for years.

Candles are a real light source and a real cause of house fires, and the second risk goes up in the dark with tired people. If you use them, use holders that cannot tip, keep them off anything soft, and put them out before anyone sleeps.

Staying warm without heating

A well-insulated home loses heat slowly, so the first night is usually comfortable and the second is not. Warmth is easier to keep than to make.

• Close the doors to rooms nobody is using, and close the curtains once it is dark.
• Move everyone into one room. Bodies heat a small room quickly.
• Layers and a hat indoors do more than any single blanket. Wool or fleece next to the skin, not cotton.
• Never run a barbecue, a camping stove, a generator or a petrol heater indoors or in an attached garage. Carbon monoxide has no smell and it is the way people die in outages rather than from the cold.

The fridge, the freezer and eating without cooking

A closed fridge keeps food safe for about 4 hours. A full freezer holds for roughly 48 hours, a half-full one for about 24. These are the figures national food-safety bodies publish, and they assume the door stays shut.

Start a clock on your phone or on paper when the power goes. Coming back to "was that four hours or nine?" is the thing that turns a freezer into a bin bag.

Eat the fridge first, the freezer second, the cupboard last. Anything you would have cooked tonight is worth cooking now if you still have gas or a safe outdoor way to do it.

Water

Mains water usually keeps running through a power cut, because most networks hold pressure without electricity. It is not guaranteed, which is why the United States publishes a stored-water figure at all: 3.785 litres per person per day.

We plan on 4 litres per person per day instead, and it is worth saying why. Storing more water than you need costs shelf space. Storing less does not fail gracefully.

If you live in a block of flats, the pump that lifts water above roughly the sixth floor is usually electric. Above that height, assume the taps stop when the power does.

Phones, and how you hear anything

Mobile masts have batteries, and those batteries are measured in hours rather than days. Expect the network to thin out on the first night and to be unreliable by the second.

IPAWS / WEA is the official public alert channel in the United States. It reaches every phone in the affected area by itself, so the only thing to do is leave emergency alerts switched on in your phone settings.

A battery or wind-up radio is the one thing in the house that keeps working when everything else has stopped, and FEMA broadcasts through it. It costs about the same as a takeaway and it lasts a decade in a drawer.

A charged power bank turns one phone into the household phone. Charge it when the clocks change, twice a year, and it will be charged when it matters.

Anything that plugs in and matters

If someone in the house depends on powered equipment, that is the first call rather than the last. Oxygen concentrators, CPAP machines, powered wheelchairs, stairlifts and refrigerated medication all stop when the power does.

Most network operators keep a priority services register for households with medical need. Joining it is free, it takes one phone call, and it puts you on the list to be told what is happening and to be reconnected sooner. It has to be done before the outage, not during it.

Insulin and similar refrigerated medicines have manufacturer guidance on how long they tolerate room temperature, and it is usually longer than people fear. Ask your pharmacy for the figure for your own prescription and write it down.

Paying for things

Card terminals, cash machines and the tills behind them all run on the same electricity you have lost. In a wide outage the shop that is open is a shop taking cash.

Enough small notes and coins for two days of ordinary spending, kept somewhere at home you would not raid for a taxi, covers this completely.

What the United States officially recommends

FEMA is the body that publishes household readiness guidance in the United States, and the figures below are theirs rather than ours.

If your household includes

• Young children: the dark is the problem, not the cold. A torch each, and a game you have played before, does more than any amount of explaining.
• Someone older or less mobile: stairs in the dark and a stairlift that has stopped are the two risks worth planning around before winter.
• Pets: they need the stored water too, and a cat flap that runs on electricity stops working.
• A medical device: the priority services register above, and the pharmacy conversation, both happen now rather than then.
• A flat above the sixth floor: assume no lift and no water, and keep more of both downstairs than you think you need.
• No car: your neighbours are the plan. It is worth knowing which of them has a gas hob before you need one.