Power Out

Carbon Monoxide From Generators

This is the one that kills, and it kills the prepared household specifically, because it requires owning a generator. CPSC’s 2022 Annual Estimates, released in May 2026, count an estimated 892 generator-associated carbon monoxide deaths from 2012 through 2022, 41% of consumer-product CO deaths, including 93 in 2022.

CPSC says to run it at least 20 feet from the house, with exhaust directed away from it. Not the garage with the door open, not the porch, not under a window. The Commission states plainly that opening doors or windows does not provide enough ventilation.

A mandatory federal rule requiring automatic shutoff and lower emissions was proposed by CPSC in 2023. It is not cited here as final. The Commission’s May 2026 guidance is to buy a model certified to PGMA G300-2023 or UL 2201-2023. UL 2201 models also have reduced CO emissions. Shutoff does not make indoor use safe. Check whether a generator you are buying carries CO shutoff — it is the feature that matters most and the one least advertised.

Heat, When the Outage and the Heat Wave Arrive Together

Heat-related deaths in the United States averaged 702 a year across 2004–2018, concentrated May through September, with adults over 65 making up 39% of them. The compound case is worse than either alone: modeling of a heat wave in Phoenix, Atlanta, and Detroit used 48 hours of total blackout and then staged restoration, and found heat-related mortality more than doubling relative to the same heat wave with power on.

Before you need it, know where the nearest cooling center is, which relatives or neighbors have power on a different circuit or a generator, and what your plan is for leaving. Air conditioning is the intervention; everything else is a delay.

Specific per-city figures from that modeling study circulate widely in secondary coverage. Only the paper’s headline result, the doubling, is used here.

Cold, and the Improvised Heat That Follows

Cold outages produce a second wave of carbon monoxide deaths from the things people burn indoors when the heat fails — charcoal grills, camp stoves, gas ovens left open. The CPSC aggregates these by product.

Never burn charcoal or run a fuel-burning appliance not vented to the outside inside a dwelling, including a garage. A gas oven is not a heater. Concentrate the household into one room, block drafts, and layer rather than combust.

Candles

Candles start roughly 7,610 home structure fires a year, causing about 81 deaths, 677 injuries and $278 million in direct property damage, on the most recent NFPA estimates. Candles are 2% of home fires but 6% of home fire injuries.

Use battery lanterns and headlamps. This is a solved problem costing under 20 dollars, and it removes the most common outage-specific fire risk from the house entirely.

The NFPA data is not specific to outages. The base rate alone is reason enough.

Electricity-Dependent Medical Equipment

Oxygen concentrators, ventilators, powered wheelchairs, dialysis equipment, infusion pumps and CPAP all stop with the power. The Department of Health and Human Services runs the emPOWER program, which publishes county and ZIP-level counts of Medicare beneficiaries relying on electricity-dependent equipment, updated monthly and overlaid with real-time hazard data.

If someone in the household is device-dependent, the plan is made in advance and in writing: battery duration measured, not estimated, a charging location, the utility’s medical-baseline or priority-restoration registration, and the name of the facility you would go to.

emPOWER counts Medicare beneficiaries, so it undercounts the true dependent population — it misses the privately insured, Medicaid-only and pediatric users. Useful for community planning, not a census.

Never Backfeed the House

Plugging a generator into a dryer or range outlet with a double-male cord energizes the home’s wiring and pushes power back out through the service drop onto lines that utility crews believe are dead. The electrical code requires listed transfer equipment — a transfer switch or a listed interlock kit — precisely to make this impossible.

The hazard is basic electrical physics and it is the consistent position of every utility safety program. No specific fatality report is cited. The point is the mechanism.

Size It for the Things That Matter, Not the House

The honest list is short: refrigerator, a few lights, phone charging, and any medical device. A refrigerator draws a few hundred watts running but several times that at startup, which is what determines the generator you need. Do the arithmetic from the nameplate ratings of your actual appliances rather than a chart.

Battery Stations versus Fuel

Battery units are silent, emit nothing, and can run indoors — which removes the entire carbon monoxide problem that heads this page. Their limit is energy: capacity is fixed until the sun or the grid returns. Fuel generators have effectively unlimited runtime and a lethal exhaust. For a CPAP or a refrigerator through a night, a battery is usually the better and safer answer; for days of outage in winter, fuel does work batteries cannot.

Fuel Storage Is Governed, and Locally

Quantities of gasoline stored at a dwelling are limited by fire code adopted from NFPA 30, with local amendments. Call your fire department and ask what your code allows, which also tells them you exist. Propane does not degrade the way gasoline does, which is its real advantage for anything stored and rarely used.

Do Not Assume the Phone Works

Cell sites have backup power that is finite, and the FCC’s regulatory history on backup power requirements is complicated — rules adopted after Katrina were challenged and scaled back. The Commission collects outage data through its Disaster Information Reporting System during activated disasters, which is where the county-level cell site outage percentages in disaster coverage come from.

A Receiver That Needs Nothing

A battery or hand-crank NOAA weather radio with SAME programming works when the network does not, and costs less than a tank of fuel. Program it for your county and it stays silent until it matters.

Agree on the Plan While the Power Is On

Where the household meets, who calls whom, the out-of-area contact who is easier to reach than a local number during a regional event, and the written copy of numbers nobody has memorized since 2007.

Insulin

FDA guidance for emergencies says unopened or in-use insulin vials and cartridges may be kept unrefrigerated between 59°F and 86°F for up to 28 days and remain usable. Insulin removed from its original container or diluted should be discarded within two weeks. Insulin in a pump infusion set exposed above 98.6°F should be discarded. Insulin that has frozen should never be used. FDA also directs patients to the manufacturer for product-specific guidance. Twenty-eight days is not a universal rule.

Device-Dependent Household Members

Battery runtime measured in advance, a charging plan, registration with the utility’s medical program, and a named destination if the outage outlasts the batteries.

Infants, Elderly Members and Pets

Formula and feeding, medication schedules, mobility, and animals all need their own line in the written plan. The rule that covers all three is that the plan is written down and someone other than you can execute it.

Cash

Card networks and ATMs run on electricity. A small amount of cash in small denominations is the most boring item on any preparedness list and the one most often missing.