Power Outage...Lessons Learned

Few people get excited about power outages.

While I was a bit bummed to lose the power tonight at 8.45pm, I was excited to put our "Disaster Recovery/Emergency Preparedness" plan to the test.

All in all, a pretty good system we've got. I'll give us a B+/A-.

Where can we improve?

1. While I had the emergency radio/TV and the batteries for it, I wasted a few minutes putting the batteries in. Could have been avoided.
   
2. We need some generic/industrial-strength candles in order to minimize flashlight usage (the flashlights btw, were all fully charged and in EXACTLY the right places, so I could navigate in the dark to locate the one I needed. That was great.)
3. We probably need a cheap copper phone line. When the power goes down, we lose our Vonage. We have cell phones, but in the event of an extended power outage and no possibility of recharging, we might face a problem.

The sad part about this was that I thought right off the bat (after I checked our fuses and looked out the windows), "I wonder if this is a city-wide terrorist attack." [why #1 above is so critical].