[Big Dad]

A couple of years back -- Christmas -- the power was out for almost 2 weeks in WA. We have a portable generator so we were fine with heat and lights, hell the sattelite TV worked fine too. People were stealing generators but we had chained ours pretty tightly to the gas meter. then locked down the backyard like a fortress. The guys house across the street caught fire after he put his fireplace trash in the garbage container. He left for work and a few hours later the side of his yard and house was on fire. I put it out with his garden hose before the fire dept could respond. I guess my point is you should think about picking up a generator that can handle running your furnace, and all the necessary circuits you think you'd like to have in case an outage lasts longer than expected. Within 2 days, Seattle and surrounding areas were out of generators. Gas stations, and grocery stores were down for days without power. Oh yeah, the grill worked great too! There were only 2 houses in the neighborhood with generators.