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Be prepared. Always keep a flashlight and batteries on hand.- Always keep these items on hand and easily accessible:
- Flashlights and fresh batteries
- Battery-powered radio
- Battery-powered or wind-up clock
- Emergency telephone numbers, including the number of your local electric company to report outages
- Corded telephone to notify your local electric company of the outage
- Protect your appliances and electronic equipment. Purchase equipment with built-in surge protection or battery-powered back-up, or use electrical surge suppressors or arresters. Plug computers and other sensitive equipment into a separate, grounded circuit to isolate them from fluctuations caused when a major appliance restarts (such as your room air conditioner or refrigerator). Consider having a lightning arrester installed at your main circuit panel.
Be smart. Keep the refrigerator closed during a power outage.- If an outage occurs, stay away from downed power lines, and warn others to do the same. Report downed lines to your local electric company.
- Turn off all appliances, including your furnace, air conditioner, water heater, and water pump. Leave on one lamp to know when power has been restored. That way, you can avoid a circuit overload and another outage that may result when power is restored to all appliances at once.
- Keep freezer and refrigerator doors closed. Food will stay frozen for 36 to 48 hours in a fully loaded freezer if you keep the door closed. A half-full freezer will generally keep food frozen for 24 hours.
- If it's hot outside, close drapes and blinds on the sunny side of your house, drink plenty of fluids, take your pets to a cool basement location, and go to an air-conditioned civic center, mall, or library if necessary to stay cool. Do not hesitate to contact a physician if you have any health-related questions.
Be informed. Electric companies work to restore power quickly.- Every electric company has a detailed plan for restoring electrical service after a power outage. Typically, one of the first steps a company takes - to prevent injuries and fires - is to make sure that power is no longer flowing through downed lines. Restoration then proceeds based on established priorities:
- The first to be repaired are transmission lines and distribution substations, because they are the most important lines carrying power from generating plants to large numbers of customers over wide areas.
- Next, electric companies restore power to critical community services such as hospitals, police and fire protection, and communications facilities.
- The next priority is to restore service to the largest number of people as soon as possible. Service to neighborhoods, industries, and businesses is systematically restored, followed by single residences and small groups of customers, until restoration is complete.
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