Power cut
The power goes off
The ordinary emergency. Everything else on this site is really a longer version of this.
The most likely thing on this list, by a very long way. Most households get one every few years. Almost all of them end the same day.
The first ten minutes
- Check whether it is just you. Look out of the window. If your neighbors have lights, it is your fusebox, not the grid.
- Turn off the oven, the hob and anything with a heating element. When the power comes back it comes back all at once.
- Leave one light switch on so you know the moment it returns.
- Do not open the fridge or freezer. A full freezer holds for about 24 hours unopened, a half empty one for about half that.
Report it to your utility, not to 911. Most utilities have a text number and an outage map. Put both in your phone today.
If it lasts into the evening
- Move everyone into one room and close the door. One warm room is easier than four cool ones.
- Eat the fridge first, the freezer second, the cupboard last.
- Phones on low power mode straight away, not when they hit 5 percent.
- If you have a car, it will charge phones. Do not run it in a closed garage, and do not sit in it to keep warm with the engine running.
The bit people forget
If your water comes from a pump, which it does in most rural properties and in the upper floors of many tall buildings, a power cut is also a water cut. Fill the bath and a few bottles in the first ten minutes, before you need to.
If anyone in the house depends on powered medical equipment, that is not a power cut, it is a medical situation, and it needs its own plan. There is one on this site.
What this actually costs to be ready for
Nothing. A charged phone, a flashlight you can find in the dark, a manual can opener and one room you can all sit in covers the overwhelming majority of power cuts that ever happen to you.
If life is at risk, call 911 first. Everything on this page comes second.