Russ... for the 9 day outage in 2004, my Coleman 5 day cooler was loaded with my refrigerator freezer contents (mostly frozen soups) and 4 one gallon frozen jugs of water... it was not opened until day 6 and the jugs still had some ice... the soups partially thawed but I considered them safe to eat (later thrown out)

I cooked out of a second, older Igloo cooler containing unfrozen perishable food and milk... four frozen jugs kept food cool (quickly opened twice a day) until day 6 when school started, and I had access to ice at the cafeteria...a smaller cooler was used to transport ice home

I have later installed a 3500w generator to keep the refrigerator running, but have reconsidered, as I typically do not have enough value stored in the refrigerator to justify the expense of running the generator

I'll continue to rely on the multi day coolers, even if I need to run the refrigerator via generator to freeze the gallon jugs

my county had ice available the day after the storm if you could wait in line...