The UK press is full of (probable rubbish) about widescale power blackouts this winter. Not being a third world country its not something we're used to!! Funnily enough a minor problem in London brought all of its power down for 24 hours the other day - perhaps its a warning?
My real question though is to our American cousins who got caught in your blackout recently:
What kit was really useful to you, what would be a real must have for, say, a three day blackout (i think I can do Candles myself) - any help greatfully received.

I was on the wrong coast of USA for the recent big blackout. So I'll speak from a 14-hour blackout we had last winter from branches blowing down power lines in our area.

The things that we found necessary and comforting were:

• warm clothes. While we have a natural gas furnace, the blower to heat the house is electric so it was not working. As the temperature in the house went down, we just added a warmth layer to our clothes. This allowed us to remain mobile and not have to huddle in bed just to stay warm.
• warm tea and food. I used my camping stove (very old Peak 1 white-gas stove) to take care of the cooking chores because our stove is electric. FWIW having warm food was a very big comfort item. It was definitely strong on the psychological factor, that feeling of "things are not all THAT bad, we can make it through this okay".
• paper plates, plastic drinking glasses, and disposable plastic silverware. No wasting water to clean reusable eating ware. Such disposables are cheap, so IMHO pick up a pack or two of each for the water & aggrevation they'll save you when resources may be in short supply.
• water. We did not lose water pressure, but I filled a few 5-gallon jerry cans I use for camping so we (two of us in the family) would have a few days of drinking & cooking water. Had it looked more dire, I would have filled the 30-gallon barrel I keep in reserve.
• light. We used some first-line flashlights and decorative lanterns that hold votive candles (tea lights) for our purposes. Yeah, it wasn't as bright as when the electric lights flood the rooms with brightness. But it sufficed. If you have even a small sense of adventure or romance (we do <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> )it's a nice break. We didn't come anywhere near digging into the spare stashed candles. We have available lights ranging from a bunch of mini- and multi-LED flashlights (mostly Inovas, with a few ASP & Photons in the mix) through multi-D-cell Maglites to a 1-million-candlepower spotlight I can recharge in the car if the AC power is out. We mostly used mini-LED lights, cheap 2 D-cell flashlights, and the aforementioned votive candles.
• small battery powered AM/FM radio (Walkman type thingy). In retrospect it might have been useful to have a radio with the weather band and police/fire frequencies on it. But in the relatively short time we were without power we didn't miss them.
• a sense of humor. This one can't be stressed enough. Some funny sh*t may well happen, so be open and receptive to the humor along the way. (Case in point, don't get your hand too close to your supper stove when lighting it if you want to keep the hair on your knuckles. Ask me how I know. <img src="images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> ) You can also come up with some funny names for what food looks like in less-than-perfect lighting.

The outage will eventually pass, so it is up to you how you choose to handle the temporary inconvenience. The outage will become a memory, but so will your behavior and treatment of your family members under the circumstances. What memory will you create for your spouse and children?

Let's face it, there's almost nothing the average electrical consumer can realistically do to restore the power grid. Getting frustrated and angry about it only worsens the psychological atmosphere in your home. Focus on what you can do:

• turn off or unplug electric devices so when the power does come back on you don't blow circuit breakers in your power panel due to the sudden loading of your house circuits
• close off portions of the house that won't be used (extra bedrooms, entrance room, bathrooms, etc.) so they won't suck up heat from the room(s) you will be living in (typically kitchen and one bedroom)
• dress warm. Focus on heating a smaller area (body & clothes) not the whole room which is a wasteful lot of air to heat.
• take care of and watch out for each other. Entertain each other. Be considerate and kind to each other, this person is also having to adjust to the changed reality of their usual lifestyle getting cramped. Patch up grievances with your spouse, because that's who is gonna help keep you warm under the covers in bed. Now the warmth can be affection or anger, it's your choice. <img src="images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
• Provide safety and security for each other. I took a few walks through the neighborhood after dark insuring that everything was remaining peaceful. I talked to a neighbor about some sparks I saw coming out of their chimney. It turned out to be innocent because they had just started a fire with paper in their fireplace, so the sparks were to be expected and were very temporary. Nonetheless, such walks cost me nothing more than a few ten-minute strolls. It was a chance to see my neighborhood in a new light, which was lightlessness for the most part. It's educational to see an area you think you really know well in a whole new way.
• do what you can while there is sunlight outside. Prepare for the dark time of day (i.e. adjust eating times and activity schedules to "sun time"). Farmers won't need to do much adjusting, they're already on sun time.
• adjust your resource allocation. "Don't waste" becomes important when the ability to renew resources becomes uncertain. Use water only for priority purposes. In our case that was drinking and cooking. Had our outage run into several days, we'd have probably used some for sponge baths, toothbrushing, & light sanitation. Filling the bathtub with hot bubblebath & soaking for an hour would have been viewed as excessive.
  

Some things you can do to get ready for a power outage, which are really only things to meet your usual needs of shelter, warmth, clothing, sustenance, and company:

• make a listing of your resources or, if you already have one, review it. Place your emergency kit materials together in one place so you'll know exactly where they are. If you use something from the E-kit during non-emergency times, be sure to put it back into its place in the kit or replace it as appropriate.
• get a gasoline-powered generator if you expect long-term outages and want to save the food that's in your freezer and refrigerator. Generators can also be a good idea if there's someone in your house with medical equipment that will need to be powered. As with all things, getting a generator or other power-generating setup is a matter of establishing your priorities, then allocating resources according to what is important in your home and family.
• stock up on water. Emptied 2L soda bottles work very well if you have some of them around already. Most estimates I've seen seem to rate water at 1 gallon per person each day for drinking and sanitation. I'm cautious enough to want to at least double that figure. Your family will have to find their own comfort level on this, as well as acceptable temperature in the house, etc.
• get a non-electrical means of heating food & water (camping stove, propane burner, wood stove or fireplace, bbq grill, coal burner or stove, etc). Do your cooking outdoors to avoid carbon monoxide buildup inside your house from an unvented camping/propane stove.
• make sure you've got warm clothes (if appropriate for your climate) and warm bedding. Get a cheapish sleeping bag for your bed, if you don't already have a good one from your camping kit.
• stock up on disposable paper plates, plastic drinking glasses, and plastic silverware. It's also handy to have extra paper towels and toilet paper on hand if needed.
• get a flashlight (or several) and spare batteries. Do not forget the spare batteries!!!
• small battery powered radio for news & updates. It's handy if it uses the same batteries as your flashlights. A citizens band (CB) or shortwave radio if you have the license for it would also be viable.
• stock up on non-heating foods of your choice like snack cookies, crisps, cakes, granola, jerky or salami sticks, bread, and components like sugar, salt&pepper, powdered milk, honey, etc. You can also set aside a few canned goods (Spaghetti-O's & other such pre-cooked pasta dishes, stews, veggies, chili, etc) that can be eaten without heating if absolutely needed. If you're cheap like me you can score ketchup, mustard, mayo, soy sauce, red pepper flakes, and salt&pepper packages from fast-food joints to incorporate into your emergency situation kits. If you want to spend some money, MRE's are a way to have relatively long storage life on your eats. If you don't care about taste, lifeboat rations (lifeboat bars) also last a long time, are rather ruggedly packed, and require no preparation at all to eat, beyond taking them out of the package.
• make a plan and do a few practice run-throughs to see what else you need or what you don't seem to use in your particular circumstances. Adjust accordingly.

Nice post - like the psychology, thanks.

Hi - the things I found most useful in the recent blackout:
--Carrying a flashlight (actually, a couple). I had an Arc LS, which I used to help guide people out of a dark subway station, and an Arc AAA that I lent to someone. Small, bright enough to find your way around (even a keychain light would suffice in a pinch) and preferably LED, because they last longer and won't suddenly reach the end of the bulb life or break in a short drop.
--A radio - I had a Walkman-style radio with me, and was able to find out (as the story developed) how widespread the outages were, and that power wasn't likely to come back soon. I had to persuade some of the people waiting on the subway platform for the next train that there wasn't going to be one. Good for any other available info, rather than being left to guess what to do, where to go (or where to avoid).
--Extra batteries (which I didn't have then, but do carry now) - a few AA or AAA batteries are tiny, stow easily and greatly increase the useful life of whatever electrical gear you do have with you. My radio's battery life was on its last legs by the time I got home.
--Water. I keep a bottle in my backpack/bookbag. The blackout was on a hot day, and many stores just closed, others sold out of water, and still other entreprenuers were selling water at double and triple the normal price (this was not the common action that I saw, but some did).
At home, I had some water in 2-liter bottles stored in a closet. We still had water in our building, but after this, I'll be getting some 7-gallon jerry cans to keep in the basement in case something like this happens again. Search this site for storage recommendations. Also, another suggestion I got from this site was to keep some 2-liter bottles of water (about 2/3 full to allow for expansion) in the freezer. If power's out, some can be transferred to the fridge to help keep it cool so food doesn't spoil as fast, and when it melts, you've got drinking water. Simple and ingenious).
--Home lighting. I had lots of flashlights, enough to lend one to a neighbor, and was set for batteries. But the thing I found was, once you're home and settled and not hunting up stuff in the dark, you want an area light to give comfort and practical lighting. We spent a bit of the evening on the couch, my wife with a flashlight tucked under her chin, blasting light at the magazine she was reading. I'm going to add a couple D-cell battery-powered LED lanterns to the mix - they're rated at 40 hours battery life at full power, and its output is adjustable.
Discussion of LED lantern

We had candles and some decorative oil lamps, but neither's the best idea with a toddler underfoot, and the chance of accidental fire still looms (the majority of the fires the night of the blackout were said to have been caused by candle use).
-- Food. We had a normal pantry's worth of foods, plus a few MREs stashed away, and wouldn't really have had a problem in that regard. Cooking would have been a hassle - I have Esbits and cans of Ecofuel, but both were a bit too much hassle to dig out for one night's use. I will probably add a small charcoal grill and keep a bag of briquets in the basement.
-- Community. As has been mentioned in many other threads and postings, there comes a time when you can help others and/or may come to need their help. Much harder to begin introducing yourself in an emergency when everyone's panicked and in need.
Living in a city can make the sense of isolation in a crowd very distinct. I met several next-door neighbors for the first time when they were barbecuing behind our apartment building the night of the blackout. I knew several of these people in the sense that we realized we lived next to each other and would acknowledge each other with a nod or "how's it going," but we didn't know each other's names. I met spouses of several of them, and their kids - my next door neighbor's son has the same name as mine. It's a small world.
This weekend, we're having our downstairs neighbors - two couples and their kids - up for coffee. Hopefully, we'll get at least to the point of knowing a thing or two about each other, but also we'll trade contact information with them - home and work numbers, e-mail - and hopefully just get the ball rolling on knowing each other and trusting each other. We've already picked up mail for our downstairs neighbors when they went out of town for a week - small courtesies mean a lot, especially in a city that tends to isolate people. People also don't want to intrude, because with the necessary crowding of a city comes the very strong sense of boundaries and dislike of people encroaching on your privacy.

Thanks to everyone here at ETS for ideas that really made a difference for me on the day of the blackout.
Dave