I agree with AKSAR it's lazy reporting, and I think it's simply to generate ad revenue.

The unfortunate effect of this is that people that are truly interested in having a reasonable preparedness level will shy away of sharing this with neighbors and friends to get them prepared. This is no way to create a culture of preparedness.

This is less of a concern of an area that has a high occurrence of a natural hazard threat (earthquakes, hurricanes, blizzards, etc.) since people can say they're preparing for it.

Lately my advice to people to just get them thinking is plan how many days you can survive without electricity. Losing electricity is a secondary "disaster" to most hazards.