Quick answer: In the first hour: check it is not just your breaker, report it, then leave the fridge shut. You have about 4 hours of refrigerator and 24 to 48 hours of freezer. Unplug electronics before power returns. The average US customer lost 11 hours to outages in 2024.
Most power outage checklists tell you to keep the fridge closed and stay calm. Neither has a clock on it, and a clock is the only thing that turns a list into a plan. This page puts a published number next to every step of the first hour, and then next to the question nobody answers: how long is this actually going to last. If it turns into days rather than hours, the equipment questions start at our power station sizing guide and our generator sizing guide.
The first 60 minutes, in order
The order matters more than the list. Two of these steps stop being possible once you have done something else, and one of them is free but expires: reporting the outage is what puts your address on the map the crew works from.
| When | Do this | Why, with the number |
|---|---|---|
| 0–5 min | Check whether it is only your house | If the street is lit, it is your breaker or fuse, not the utility, and the rest of this page does not apply |
| 5–10 min | Report it to the utility | Crews dispatch from reported addresses; an unreported outage on a single street can sit unnoticed |
| 10–15 min | Put the phone on low power and stop using it as a torch | It is your link to the restoration estimate. A headlamp is not |
| 15–25 min | Leave the fridge and freezer shut, and write the time on a note | 4 hours of fridge, 24–48 of freezer, and the clock started when the power did not |
| 25–40 min | Unplug electronics and anything with a motor | FEMA asks for this because restoration can arrive as a surge |
| 40–60 min | Decide if this is an hours problem or a days problem | Everything below turns on that answer, and the utility estimate is the input |
Nothing on this power outage checklist requires equipment you had to buy in advance, which is the point. The buying decisions come later and they come better if you spent the first hour measuring the problem instead of reacting to it.
What you are actually racing: the food clock
The federal guidance is specific, and it is the one part of this that has hard numbers behind it. A refrigerator holds a safe temperature for about four hours unopened. A full freezer holds for about 48 hours, a half-full one for about 24, doors closed.
| Appliance | Holds for | Safe temperature | The rule when power returns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Refrigerator | about 4 hours | 40 °F or below | Discard perishables held at 40 °F or above for two hours or more |
| Freezer, half full | about 24 hours | 0 °F or below | Refreeze only if it still has ice crystals or is at 40 °F or below |
| Freezer, full | about 48 hours |
Two things follow from those numbers that a list of tips will not tell you. The first is that a full freezer is not a hoarding habit, it is thermal mass: the difference between half full and full is a full day of margin, for free. The second is that the fridge, not the freezer, is the appliance under threat, which is why our refrigerator wattage article is the one people reach for during an outage and the chest freezer article is the one that says, correctly, to leave it alone.
How long is this going to last?
This is the question the first hour exists to answer, and the one a power outage checklist normally skips. There is a federal dataset for it that almost nobody quotes here. The EIA collects reliability data from utilities and publishes it in the Electric Power Annual. For 2024 the figure was 11 hours of interruption for the average customer across the year, which it calls nearly twice the annual average of the decade before.
| What is being counted | Hours per customer, per year |
|---|---|
| Everything, 2024 | 11 hours |
| Major events only, 2024 | nearly 9 hours |
| Major events only, 2014–2023 average | nearly 4 hours |
| Ordinary operation, any year | about 2 hours |
Read that table honestly and it splits your year in two. Ordinary outages account for roughly two hours across twelve months: they are short, and the fridge wins. Everything else is weather, and in a bad year weather alone is nine. So the useful question in the first hour is not how long outages last on average. It is which of the two kinds you are in, and the answer is usually visible out of the window and confirmed by the utility estimate.
If the estimate is hours, you are managing a fridge and a phone. If it is a storm with crews travelling from other states, you are managing days, and the freezer margin is the number that matters.
The three things that hurt people in the first hour
All three come from trying to restore normality too quickly, and all three have published casualty numbers behind them.
Candles. The NFPA counts an average of 7,610 home structure fires started by candles a year for 2014 to 2018, causing 81 deaths and 677 injuries. In its study of fatal candle fires the home was without power in 26 per cent of them. That figure is quoted everywhere and it is worth reading the footnote nobody quotes: in 68 per cent of those cases the power had been shut off or the home lacked utilities entirely. Candles used during a temporary outage accounted for six fires and six deaths in the period studied. The risk is real and it is smaller than the headline number suggests. Use a torch anyway: the cost of doing so is nothing.
Generators indoors. The CPSC has associated portable generators with roughly 765 non-fire carbon monoxide deaths since 2009, and its instruction is unambiguous: never in a home, garage, basement, crawlspace or shed, and at least 20 feet from the building with the exhaust pointed away. Note that manufacturers often print a shorter figure — the manual we quote in our generator fuel consumption article says 15 feet — and where two published distances disagree, take the longer one.
The gas stove as a heater. Ready.gov states it flatly: “Do not use a gas stove or oven to heat your home. It increases your risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.” This one has no upside at all, because an oven is a poor room heater even when it is safe.
Your phone will probably outlast the tower
Everyone rations phone battery in an outage. Fewer people know that the network has its own battery problem, and that the reassuring rule most articles cite does not exist.
After Hurricane Katrina the FCC adopted a rule requiring eight hours of backup power at cell sites and 24 hours at central offices. The wireless industry appealed. The Office of Management and Budget then rejected the information collection that was a prerequisite to the rules taking effect, the D.C. Circuit dismissed the petitions as moot and vacated the rules, and the Commission deleted its backup power requirements in 2011. The eight-hour figure you will see quoted as a federal guarantee is a rule that never took effect.
Practically: expect coverage to degrade in a long outage rather than fail all at once, keep one device charged rather than four half charged, and remember that your home router and modem draw so little that a small battery keeps the house online for a day or more if the line itself is alive.
If you are on a well, the water stops with the lights
This is the step that splits the audience in two, and the half it applies to is larger than most people assume. The USGS puts it at more than 43 million people, about 15 per cent of the US population, on domestic wells, and the EPA gives the same share from the household side.
A private well is an electric pump. No power, no pressure, and unlike the fridge there is no margin at all: what you have is whatever is left in the pressure tank, which is minutes rather than hours. That covers a couple of flushes and nothing else. So for a well household the first-hour list gains one item that outranks almost everything above it — fill containers now, and fill the bath if the outage estimate is long, because a bathtub of water is what makes toilets work tomorrow.
If you are on a municipal supply the pressure usually outlives the outage, since distribution leans on elevated storage rather than on your street having power. It is not a guarantee, and utilities do issue boil-water notices after major events, so the same advice costs nothing: fill something in the first hour. The pump itself is the load that decides your equipment later, and it is a demanding one — the figures are in our well pump wattage article, and it is the reason a well household ends up sizing for a bigger machine than a city household with the same appliance list.
When it is going past a day
Past roughly the 24 hour mark a power outage checklist changes from preservation to supply, and the order of what to power is not the order people expect. It is set by what breaks if it stops, not by what is missed.
| Priority | Why it is there | Where the numbers are |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Anything medical | Ready.gov asks you to plan this with your provider before it happens, not during | Overnight CPAP consumption |
| 2. A sump pump, if you have one | The only load here where an hour of failure causes damage that outlasts the outage | Sump pump running and starting watts |
| 3. The refrigerator | Its four hours are already gone by now; it needs power, not patience | Certified refrigerator draw |
| 4. Light, phones, router | Tiny loads that dominate quality of life per watt-hour spent | The appliance wattage chart |
| 5. Heating or cooling | Almost always the load that will not fit, and the one to solve without electricity | Generator sizing by load |
On medicines, the official line is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing, because this is the one item on the list where guessing is dangerous. Ready.gov: “If the power is out for more than a day, discard any medication that should be refrigerated, unless the drug’s label says otherwise. Consult your doctor or pharmacist immediately for a new supply.” We are not going to improve on that sentence and we are not qualified to.
If you are running a battery rather than an engine, the constraint is refilling it rather than the loads themselves, which we cover in recharging a power station during an outage. If you are running an engine, the safety rules above are not optional, and a station indoors is a different question entirely, covered in running a power station indoors.
How we read this
Every hour figure on this power outage checklist is published by a federal agency and linked where it appears: the food margins from FoodSafety.gov, the outage hours from the EIA reliability data, the fire counts from the NFPA, the carbon monoxide figures from the CPSC, and the communications history from the FCC’s own docket. What is ours is the sequencing of the first hour and the priority order above, and both are labelled as ours.
Where a widely repeated number turned out to be softer than it looks, we said so rather than passing it on: the candle statistic is mostly about homes with the supply cut off, and the eight-hour cell tower rule was vacated and never applied. A checklist that repeats those two as facts is a checklist nobody checked.
The things that are not negotiable
Stay away from downed lines and anything touching them, and call 911 for fire, a suspected gas leak or a medical emergency. A generator runs outside only, at least 20 feet from the building with the exhaust pointed away, never in a garage even with the door open, and never plugged into a wall socket to feed the house — that is backfeeding and it can kill a utility worker. Fit a battery-operated carbon monoxide alarm.
Do not heat the house with a gas stove or oven. Connecting any generator to a building’s wiring is a job for a qualified electrician working to local code. If cold or heat is becoming a health problem rather than a comfort problem, that is what municipal warming and cooling centres exist for, and it is a call to make early rather than late. We are not electricians and this page is not medical advice.
Frequently asked questions
How long will food last in the fridge without power?
About four hours with the door kept shut. After that, federal guidance is to discard perishables that have been at 40 °F or above for two hours or more. Keep a thermometer in there so it is a reading rather than a guess, and never taste anything to decide.
Should I open the fridge to move food into the freezer?
Only once, quickly, and only in the first hour while the freezer is still deeply cold. Every opening costs both compartments. If the outage estimate is short, the arithmetic favours leaving both shut.
Do I really need to unplug things?
FEMA asks for it, because restoration can arrive as a surge. Unplug electronics and motor-driven appliances, and leave one lamp switched on so you know the moment power returns without patrolling the house.
How long do power outages usually last?
Ordinary ones are short: interruptions outside major events add up to roughly two hours across an entire year. Storms are the other category, and in 2024 major events alone accounted for nearly nine hours per customer. Which kind you are in is the thing to establish early.
Will my phone still work?
Usually, for a while. There is no federal requirement that cell sites hold a set number of hours on batteries: the rule that said eight hours was vacated and deleted. Assume coverage degrades over a long outage and keep one device charged rather than several.
Is a generator worth it for a few hours a year?
For ordinary interruptions, honestly, no: two hours a year is a torch and a shut fridge. The case for equipment is built on the storm category, on medical loads, and on whether a sump pump failure would flood a basement. Those are the questions our sizing guide is for.
The short version of a power outage checklist is that the first hour is for measurement, not for equipment. Establish whether it is your breaker or the grid, get on the utility list, start the food clock and write down when it started, unplug what a surge would ruin, and then find out whether you are in the two-hour category or the nine-hour one. Everything you might buy afterwards is a better decision once you know which.
This article is general information, not an installation guide and not a substitute for a licensed electrician. Electrical work on a service panel, a transfer switch or a utility connection is regulated in most jurisdictions and normally requires a permit and an inspection. Fuel-burning equipment produces carbon monoxide and must never be run indoors, in a garage or near an opening into the home.
