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5 Things to Prepare for a Long Power Outage (and the One Almost Everyone Forgets)

Carol Whitfield | Grandmother of four · Wrote this after our third outage in two years

Carol has run the same house for thirty one years and always considered herself ready. The third outage showed her the one thing thirty one years of lists had never covered.

Most people reading this have been through more outages than they can count. You know where the flashlights are. You know to fill the tubs before a storm. You have probably talked somebody else through one.

That was true of me too, right up until the third one in two years.

What that week showed me was not that I had been careless. It was that every checklist I had ever followed, including the ones from the county and the ones I handed to my own kids, skips the same step. Not because it is difficult. Because it looks like it is already covered, and it is not.

Here is what to have ready for an outage that runs past a day, in the order that actually matters. The one that catches people is not near the top.

Light and a way to know what is happening.

Flashlights in every room, spare batteries, and a hand crank or battery radio so you are not depending on a phone you cannot recharge. This is the part almost everyone gets right. It is also the part that creates a false sense of being ready, because light and information are not what make a multi day outage hard.

Water, and food you do not have to cook.

A gallon of water per person per day, and a shelf of food that needs no heat. Most families stop here and feel covered. Then the outage stretches past a day, and they discover that cold canned food and granola bars become their own kind of misery by the second day, and worse if anyone in the house is unwell. Cold food keeps a family alive. It does not keep anyone calm.

A safe way to cook. The grill is not it.

That sounds reasonable on a clear Saturday afternoon.

But outages rarely happen in good weather.

It is dark, raining, freezing or windy. You carry food, cookware and a heavy propane cylinder outside, stand in the weather while dinner cooks, and let more warmth escape every time you open the door.

Depending on where you live, grills may also be restricted on apartment balconies, condo patios or near combustible buildings.

The real danger begins when someone thinks:

“I’ll use it in the garage.”
“I’ll crack a window.”
“It will only be a few minutes.”

Gas and charcoal grills can produce carbon monoxide—an invisible, odorless gas that can cause unconsciousness and death. They should never be used inside a home, garage or partially enclosed space, even with doors or windows open.

There is also the fire risk from open flames, grease flare-ups, intense heat and nearby walls, railings or stored belongings.

So the grill is not a bad appliance.

It is simply an outdoor appliance being asked to solve an indoor emergency.

What I needed was something compact enough to keep near the food, simple enough to use without carrying propane through a storm, and ready when cooking outside was no longer practical.

A plan that does not depend on going outside.

Almost everyone who has sat through a long outage has either bought a generator or been told to buy one. Worth knowing what it actually asks of you before you count on it.

It has to sit outside, at least twenty feet from the house, running in whatever weather took the power down in the first place. It has to get out there. It has to be started, which on most portable units means a pull cord and somewhere to brace. It has to be refueled in the dark. And the gasoline has to have been sitting somewhere all year waiting for this.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission puts generator carbon monoxide deaths at roughly a hundred a year, and about eight in ten of them happen at a residence. Many fatal incidents involve generators being operated inside or too close to homes, garages, doors, windows or vents.

None of that makes it a bad machine. It makes it a machine whose job has to be done outdoors, at the worst hour of the worst night, by whoever happens to be home. If that is the entire plan, there is a step in the plan that nobody has ever practiced.

The one almost everyone forgets: a way to heat the food already on the shelf.

That was the hole in my own plan.

I had water. Flashlights. Batteries. A first-aid kit. And enough canned food to last for weeks.

But when the electric stove stopped working, all that food became a collection of cold cans.

I did not need a generator powerful enough to run the entire house. I did not want to carry a propane cylinder through the rain or stand outside over a grill every time somebody wanted soup.

I needed one small, dependable source of heat for the meals I had already stored.

That is when I found FireNest.

FireNest is a compact alcohol-fuel backup stove designed to give you a usable cooking flame without electricity or a bulky propane cylinder.

It is smaller than a coffee mug, fits inside a kitchen drawer and can be prepared in under thirty seconds. Place the burner into its support stand, add the approved fuel, light it according to the instructions and use it to heat an ordinary pot.

It does not try to power your refrigerator, lights and entire house.

It does one important job:

It turns the food you already stored into a warm meal.

Why this was the missing piece

No electricity required. It creates its own cooking flame.

No twenty-pound propane cylinder. The stove and its fuel setup take up very little storage space

Ready quickly. There is no engine to start, extension cord to run or equipment to assemble.

Stored near the food. It can remain accessible instead of disappearing into the garage.

Made for an ordinary meal. Heat soup, prepare pasta or boil a modest amount of water using compatible cookware.

Easy to keep as a backup. It stays out of the way until the day you need it.

What fuel does FireNest use?

FireNest uses 95 percent ethanol or higher.

Check the label before you buy. Products sold as denatured alcohol vary widely in the United States, and some of the most common cans are less than half ethanol, with most of the balance made up of methanol. You want one that states 95 percent ethanol or higher. You can find it at most hardware and home improvement stores in the paint and solvent aisle, and at marine supply stores. Store it in its original container, sealed, away from heat and out of reach of children.

One small fill burns for about 15 minutes, depending on your cookware and the room around it. There is no flame adjustment, so once it is lit it burns until the fuel runs out. Plan your cooking around that window rather than topping up mid meal.

Never substitute gasoline, lighter fluid, isopropyl alcohol or any other fuel.

Never add fuel while the burner is lit, warm, or possibly still burning. Alcohol burns with a pale flame that is nearly invisible in daylight, so a burner that looks out may not be. Wait at least 2 minutes after the flame appears to be out before refilling.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission warns that pouring fuel into a device that still holds a flame can ignite the vapor inside the fuel container and propel burning liquid onto the person refilling it. This is called flame jetting and it causes severe burns.

Keep a lid within reach whenever the burner is lit. Smothering is the correct response to a spill fire.

FireNest™

Alternatives

No bulky propane cylinder to carry or store

No electricity required

Sets up in under 30 seconds

Fits in a kitchen drawer

No engine, extension cord or pull start

You cannot control when the power goes out or how long it stays out. You can control whether your family eats a hot meal while it does. The first few things on this list are easy to forget and easy to fix. The cooking gap is the one worth closing today.

If you do not already have a stove built for indoor use, the Blacksight FireNest is the one worth looking at.

Most of us are more confident than we are equipped, and there is real data on it. When the University of Michigan surveyed adults aged fifty to eighty about power outages, sixty nine percent said they felt very confident they could take care of themselves and their family through one lasting more than a day. Just over half had a week of food and water in the house.

That gap is not carelessness. It is what happens when you have handled a dozen short outages and never had one run long enough to find the missing piece.

FEMA's national survey found the same pattern by a different route: people sixty and over feel about as prepared as everyone younger, and have taken fewer of the steps.

The most common mistake families make during an outage is bringing an outdoor fuel device inside. Carbon monoxide builds with no warning. The safe answer is a stove actually designed for indoor use, used with normal ventilation.

Based on guidance from the U.S. CDC and the American Red Cross

The next outage is not an if. The hot meal is the part you can solve today.

I had spent years storing the things my family might need during an outage.

FireNest completed the shelf by giving me a practical way to use the food that was already there.

It stays packed away when life is normal. But when the stove stops working, I do not have to carry propane through a storm, start a generator or tell everyone that dinner is crackers again.

See the Complete FireNest Backup Cooking Kit

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