Power’s Out. Now What?

Do you know what? 75% of people do not know what to do when the power goes out. I read this statistic twice over Thanksgiving in New Hampshire: Once reading Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, and Surviving the Aftermath and again in a Concord Monitor article. It was this time last year that New Hampshire got hit with two-feet of snow cutting off electricity for three to four days in large swaths of the state.

Experts say the first thing you should do in a power outage is call the electric company. In the article Don Nourse, a manager for distributed systems operations for Eversource in New Hampshire says, “Probably only about 25 percent of affected customers (in an outage) actually call us. A lot of folks think that their neighbors called and that we know, but oftentimes we don’t know. We rely on them.”

An old fashioned phone call to the electric company may seem outdated to some, but that’s what the experts running the grid are saying you should do. I’ve already entered the numbers in my phone and have them written down on a business card. I recommend the same for you and your family.

For a look at how snow can turn the lights out, watch this report from WMUR in New Hampshire last year:

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

Preparing your investments and family for when disaster strikes.

E.J. Smith is the Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH, where he completed course-work in Practical and Defensive Handgun, Conceal Carry Pistol, Shotguns, Precision Scope Rifle and Kidnapping Prevention. E.J. plays a Yamaha Recording Custom drum set with Zilldjian cymbals. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zilldjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@youngresearch.com. Sign up here to receive all the best content from Richardcyoung.com each week.