Contrary to popular belief of the "squeaky wheels get the grease", power companies have established procedures for restoring from power outages. Typically they try to first focus on areas that have critical facilities such as hospitals and other public emergency and health facilities such as police, fire and ambulance to name a few.

Almost every power company website explains these procedures in detail, including Pepco

A Google of your "power company" power restoration process will show that most companies have similar processes.

Some random examples:

PPL Electric

Duke Electric

First Energy Corp

Consumers Energy

BGE

My power company. In Canada, the term ""Hydro" is more common then "power"
BC Hydro


Last year, we had a 30 hour+ outage which affected more then 700,00 hydro customers. Our neighborhood was one of the last restored and I can why. It is a small neighborhood with few customers on the power subsystem and no critical facilities that would take priority. Less then 2 blocks away, a residential area that also has 2 elderly care homes in it's midst, had power restored within hours. The same goes for the area around the nearest fire hall about 6 blocks away.

After this outage and a couple more, but much shorter duration outages, we purchased a 2000 watt generator to at least keep the fridge and freezer running and also to run a portable heater in the winter. Probably one of the best purchases we made in the last few years.