How to Deal with No Power in Areas of California

[BillTre]

Some areas of California are going to have their power turned off to prevent wild fires like they had last year. I don't live there, so lucky me. Its my understanding that some of the fires were started by wires blowing around and causing sparks in some way.
Apparently, the power may be off for up to a week.

I am interested in hearing how people might , other than using a generator, deal with this situation?
For me at least, I think my main concern would keeping things refrigerated.
Of course, preparation ahead of time would be best.

 

[Mark44]

For me at least, I think my main concern would keeping things refrigerated.

Generator...

I live in an area out in the country where there have been fairly frequent power outages, usually due to trees falling down, knocking out the power lines. Of the 12 or so families on my short street, I believe that all of them have generators.

The power lines are buried in my neighborhood, but outside the 'hood, the lines are on poles, so at times when the ground is especially soaked and it gets windy, the power often goes out. Same is true if we get a heavy, wet snowfall. I do have to say that the local electric utility has put a lot of effort into trimming tree branches that are close to the power lines, so there are not quite as many outages in the last few years as compared to when my wife and I first moved to our present home.

 

[berkeman]

I am interested in hearing how people might , other than using a generator, deal with this situation?

Here's a related thread in the EE forum about the reliability (or lack thereof) of various electrical distribution systems, which has contributed to these power shutoff events:

https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...ability-around-the-world.978801/#post-6245257
I was in the middle of the recent shutdown event (I live in the foothills above San Jose in Norcal). I keep several deep-discharge batteries charged as part of my HAM radio emergency preparedness, and they can keep cell phones and portable devices charged nicely.

We are lucky in that we have gravity-fed water distribution up here, so our water service did not go out. We still filled several large buckets with water to use for washing and flushing if needed. We also have access to a large pool, so we could have used buckets to go get water for flushing if we needed it.