Take steps to protect your family and property:

• Activate contingency plans for patients with a medical necessity for electric power.
  
  
• Limit freezer and refrigerator door openings. Food will keep longer if doors remain closed. Check items for spoilage before serving. Don't cook inside with charcoal. American Red Cross-What Should Be Discarded After an Outage?
  
  
• Try to keep outside door openings to a minimum and use blankets, sleeping bags and extra clothes to help stay warm. Dress in layers and wear a hat. Cover drafty windows and doors with blankets. Close off doors and stay in the room with your heat source. If the room has openings without doors, use blankets to cover them.
  
  

• Run your generator only through a properly installed transfer switch or plug appliances directly into the generator using a properly sized extension cord. Do not run the generator in enclosed spaces. View our generator guide.
  
  

• Turn off all large appliances that come on automatically, like electric water heaters, heat pumps and space heaters. Make sure appliances you were using when the outage occurred, like ovens, stoves, irons or power tools are turned off. Disconnect sensitive electronics like TVs, VCRs and computers to avoid damage from surges.

• When the power comes back on, give the electric system a chance to stabilize by gradually using the appliances you turned off. Use only the most essential first and wait 15 minutes on the others, including water and space heating.

• If you clear trees on your property, don't try to remove those tangled in power lines. Stay away from any downed lines (no matter what type) and notify us about them immediately.

Check the power supply to your home:

Check your home's breaker panel (and any outdoor disconnects) to make sure the outage isn't due to a tripped breaker. Call your neighbors to see if their power is off. This will help you determine if the problem exists within your home or on our lines. If you determine the problem is outside your home, contact us day or night, 365 days a year. Please have this information ready:

• Account name
• Street address
• Home phone
• Cause of power outage (if you know it)