I thought I would post my experience and a quick summary of what worked and what didn't. We didn't have power for 40 hours. First, thanks to Doug and Chris (and others) for creating a very useful forum that is not 'survivalist' in nature. The blackout (or should it be 'Blackout') was a very useful reminder that many 'situations' occur in day-to-day life and this is often what one needs to respond to, be it snowstorm, blackouts or floods.

Here are some general observations (based on Toronto). People are great (mostly)! Lots of people took the time to help direct traffic, make room for emergency services, hand out water to people walking home, visit and check with elderly neighbours, create the 'Mother of All BBQs', provide updates to neigbours, help sipon gas, etc.

Some people suck - those that decided to rob stores and, in my mind, the even more evil gas station owners that decided to jack prices by 30 - 40%.

In this kind of emergency, you (if you are reading this site) will be the most prepared. Take some time to help out the neighbours - this isn't the time to pull the gun and guard the hideout.

Some thoughts on What worked:

1. Have your car(s) filled with gas and have some spare gas (with fuel stabilizer) handy. Major problems with people who wanted to get out of town but couldn't. Thankfully my wife had filled our truck, car had some gas and a spare 5gal in my bike - keep tanks at least 1/2 full. Buy a proper sipon system (about $5), Toronto had over 20 people taken to hosp from sucking in fuel (likely with their garden hose = a really big gulp of gas) - don't be an idiot, EMS is already way too busy!

2. Have a battery powered/solar/wind-up radio. Many people had no idea of what was happening. My solar/wind-up Freeplay was FANTASTIC and saved having to run back to the car every 5 min. As others have noted, many stations off the air for some time

3. LED flashlights are very useful. Small = have them with me, didn't have ot worry about batteries and just the right amount of light for the day-to-day tasks (like taking a pee, looking for the cooler, etc). We had 'bigger' lights (eg SureFire), but not critical for most stuff. Lots of people stuck underground in the subway - hot and dark = nice to have a light

4. Some form of lantern would be helpful. We had Coleman, which we really didn't need. I want to buy/build 2-3 LED lanterns that run off large batteries. We also had glow sticks (which we didn't use - see below), which would have been helpful

5. Water. You need it. You really need it if you are in an Apartment. While experience varied, many apt dwellers had no water. We had 60l in 'water cooler' style containers and probably ~40l in bottles, etc (before hitting the wine collection!). We also have a very good water filter from camping. As I left work, I reached into my drawer and grabbed 2 500ml water bottles to take with me. If you don't need it, the sweaty guy directing traffic does!

6. Ham radio and Lic (kicking myself for not having it with me initially). A net was established from the CN Tower repeater almost instantly and was very useful in getting good data and real-time info on useful information for ME (ie road conditions on road we would be taking to leave town). Very small hand-held unit, AA batteries, AM/FM/TV receive, autopatch to patch into phone system, all EMS freq - great unit that is the size of a pack of smokes

7. Having gear ready to go (food, etc). I chucked these in the truck, added other stuff and we were good to go

8. Batteries are useful, but standardize. I find it quite helpful to have most of my gear standardized on ONE battery type (AA) and buy the big bricks of name brand batteries at Costco. The SureFire is great, but useless once you run out of batteries.

I didn't need it, but I have a good marine deep cycle battery and an inverter that could have been very helpful (lots of power for Ham radio, ability to power lights, etc)

Stuff that didn't work as well:

1. Cell phone. As expected, these are completely useless for communications in emergencies. Many cells seemed to have no power and system was completely overloaded. Don't rely on this in an emergency, you should have some $$ for pay phones and see HAM RADIO above!

2. Having emergency kits that I packed many moons ago with no idea what was in them, or where critical things were (...now where is that radio). Keep lists posted to the packs with contents. This is the reason we didn't use the glow sticks

3. Having no gas in the BBQ tank

After preparing our stuff, making sure all was ok, helping some neighbours we spent the night in the back yard drinking wine with neighbours and looking at the best night sky I have ever seen in Toronto (including Mars) and then 'bugged-out' the next AM for a location with power (with all of our emergency gear).

I hope this helps