What would you do in a power failure?

Last year, When we had a mayor earthquake in my country, Chile, I was without electricity for over 3 days. I also cook with gas, so that was not important. I do have an electric heater for coffees and the such and I had to boil water in a pot. I was worried about the things in the freezer and only opened it for a second to get what was nearer. Candles are part of my house, not the aromatic ones but the ones we have to have in my country in case of earthquakes as this is the country with more earthquakes in the world. During the day one can do almost anything but watch TV or play with the computer. But I like reading,gardening and cooking. And I had to cook for the day with daylight. We did not know how long this would last: most of our country did not had power. I know what you mean when you say that electricity is now so much part of our lives. Yet only a about 200 years ago that Michael Faraday started to talk about uses for that weird thing called electricity. Before that man did without.

It would most certainly drive me crazy. I usually clean during the day so without electricty I wouldn't be able to run my washer/dryer/cook/do dishes, needless to say everything in my house is electric except my furnace but the blower is electric so I would still freeze. I think that I would pack up the kids and go over to my moms, so then at least my three year old could play with my sisters, and me and my mom could play cards or just talk. That way it would be a way to entertain us until we got power back. We experienced one day without electricty when we had a power outage, but we were fortunate enough that my husbands parents had electricty. They don't live to far away so we just stayed with them until our power came back on. We defiantly take electricty for granted though, you never realize it until you don't have it.

I make it a point to sit with my wife and daughter and play word games.Or else I always light a candle and try to make as many shadow images on the wall with my fingers.In spite of all these things I am always at a loss to find a way out to compensate the Air conditioner comfort.

The first thing that i would probably do is start complaining that the power has gone out. then i would make sure that my family was safe and secure. searching for flashlights and candles would probably be the next step. I would probably also check with neighbors to make sure the power company knew of the outtage. waaiting for the power to come back on is just a matter of timne. being prepared and ready for anything is something we should always consider. We never know when a crisis can occur.

Power failure which is called load shedding, is a regular feature here. We have installed a Home UPS(Uninterrupted Power Supply) which is different from the computer UPS.With this Home UPS we can use the computer, lights, fans and tv.when there is no regular power supply.

When there was a local block out from 6 am to 6 pm, all we (my siblings and I) did for the whole time was lay in bed, try to sleep, go out and look at the flowers in the backyard and then back to laying in bed again. I turned off my phone but turned it on on an hourly basis to see if I have any messages. We also depend much on electricity, it's like we can't do anything without it.