Most blackout advice is a list of things to own. Very little of it covers what to actually do, and in what order, once the lights go out.
Order matters more than most people expect.
The same supplies can give you a comfortable day or a miserable one. The difference is almost always the sequence you use them in.
Here's the sequence.
The first 10 minutes: find out how big it is
Before anything else, figure out whether it's your house, your street or your whole area.
Look out the window. If the neighbors have lights, check your breaker box. That's a 20-minute problem, not a 2-day one.
If the whole street is dark, check your power company's website or app while your phone battery is still full. A widespread blackout with no restoration time is a very different day from a local fault with a crew already on the way.
Everything after this depends on that answer.
The first hour: stop the losses
Three things, in this order.
Keep the fridge and freezer shut. A closed fridge keeps food safe for about 4 hours. A full freezer holds for about 48 hours, a half-full one about 24 (FoodSafety.gov). Decide now what you're eating tonight, take it out in one trip, and leave both doors closed.
Fill containers with drinking water. If you're on a well, the pump is electric and you've already lost your supply. On city water, pressure can drop in a long blackout. Fill the bathtub, fill pots, fill bottles. It costs nothing, takes 5 minutes, and it's the step people most often wish they hadn't skipped.
Unplug the big stuff. Power often comes back with a surge, and a surge through everything at once is how a blackout turns into a repair bill. Leave one lamp switched on so you know the moment it's back.
Hours 1 to 4: heat, light and news
If it's cold, pick one room. Not the whole house. One room with the door shut, ideally with a south-facing window and no drafts. Move everyone and everything you need into it. Heating one room is doable. Heating a whole house without power isn't.
For light, spread it out. Give each person their own small light instead of lighting one room bright. It uses less power, and nobody gets stuck in the dark because someone else took the only lantern upstairs.
For news, a battery or hand-crank radio beats your phone in a long blackout. Cell towers run on power too, and in a big blackout they can go down along with everything else. Even when they stay up, the radio doesn't drain the battery you'd want for calls. Ration the phone on purpose: airplane mode when you're not using it, screen brightness all the way down.
Hours 4 to 12: eat in the right order
Eat through your food in the order it spoils. Fridge first, then freezer, then shelf-stable food.
That's the opposite of what most people do by instinct, which is save the good stuff and open the cans.
If you can make heat safely, a hot meal is worth more than its calories. Being warm on the inside does wonders for morale, especially for the grandkids.
If you can't make heat, this is where canned goods earn their spot on the shelf. Anything you can open and eat cold, straight from the can, keeps everyone fed without a stove.
Hours 12 to 24: settle in
By now you'll know whether this is ending soon. If it isn't, switch from coping to a routine.
Set up sleeping in the warm room. Bodies in one space hold heat, and everyone sleeps better than they would alone in a cold bedroom.
Check on your neighbors, especially anyone older or on powered medical equipment. This is when a quiet problem two doors down turns into a serious one, and most people won't ask for help.
Do one useful job while it's light out. Top off your water, tidy the room, sort out tomorrow's food. A blackout gets harder when there's nothing to do and everything's dark.
What to sort out ahead of time
Looking back over that day, 4 things are worth setting up now:
- A way to make heat that doesn't plug in. Hot food and hot drinks are the biggest comfort difference you can give yourself.
- Light that doesn't depend on batteries you forgot to buy. Rechargeable, solar or crank, one per person.
- Food that needs no fridge and no stove. A shelf of canned goods you'd actually want to eat, like shelf-stable canned meat that's good for years and ready straight from the can.
- Containers you can fill with water in 5 minutes. It doesn't have to be stored water, just something ready to fill while the pressure is still there.
None of this costs much, and it's all a lot easier to set up on a normal Tuesday than in the dark.
Final thoughts
For most households, a day without power isn't dangerous. It's uncomfortable, and most of that comes down to the decisions made in the first hour.
Know the sequence and it's an inconvenient evening. Wing it and it's a bad day.