Depending on the voltages involved any direct action on your part is unlikely to help and is very likely to cause them significant distress. Without the right tools, training and a correct understanding of the voltages involved waiting is probably the best approach. Hard call to make, but adding to the list of victims (and going first) isn't helping anyone.

When working with high voltages there is no such thing as an "insulator", there are just various quality levels of conductors. Electricity is lazy and will follow the path of least resistance. You never want to be in that path and distance is the best way to stay safe. Proper equipment and and training lets you work in areas with higher gradients (closer to the source).

Keeping this in mind, look at how high the poles are and how far apart they are. Ideally any thing you would do to "help" would need to be done from a distance of at least twice the pole height or separation distance from the downed lines. Around here that would mean you need to stay at least 60 to 90 feet away from the problem and you should be much further for higher voltage lines. What can you do from this distance? Best choice - call 911 and or/the power company.

After that there are no good choices. For the scenario you describe and assuming wooden power poles (single pole), I might try killing the power lines around my family by taking down some of the poles feeding the downed lines. This isn't a great idea but desperate people do silly things. Not sure how I'd accomplish this before help arrived without a great chainsaw and lots of spare chains (creosote kills chains very quickly). If the "poles" are metal or three legged I think I'd spend my time between phone calls consulting a much higher power and trying to keep my loved ones calm.

Sometimes there really are no win scenarios.

- Eric