After Hurrican Juan went through Nova Scotia, at least two of the people who had portable generators set up a rotating schedule to power their neighbours' freezers. They calculated that powering the freezers for 3 hours out of every 12 would prevent the food from spoiling. One of them calculated that he could run three freezers simultaneously, so he was able to keep 11 neighbours' food from spoiling (plus his own).

I also read a Reader's Digest story about a young couple who scrimped and saved to buy a small roadside cafeteria. The night before their "Grand Opening", the area was devastated by a hurricane. By some fluke, they still had power after the storm passed, but were prohibited by law from selling any food. Their solution was to start giving the food away to anyone who could make it to the restaurant. Once word got out that there was a restaurant giving away free food, pretty soon the place was standing room only. Then a woman who had experience as a waitress made the woman sit down while she took over taking orders; others spontaneously started bussing tables, grabbing mops and cleaning the floors, etc. Then people started showing up with truckloads of meat, saying it would just spoil if it didn't get cooked and served.

They didn't make any money that night, but I'll bet they got a lot of repeat business.

Myself, I'd figure that once the emergency was over, I'd still be living next door to those people and act neighbourly. What goes around comes around.