The lights just went out. Not flickered — out, with that particular silence a house makes when the refrigerator stops. The first hour sets the tone for the whole outage: handled calmly, it is sixty minutes of small, obvious moves. Here they are, in order.
Minutes 0–5: Light first, then look
Get a flashlight in your hand before you do anything else — not a candle, and not your phone's last 12% if you can help it. Then figure out the size of the problem. Is it just your home? Check the breaker panel for a tripped switch. Is it the street? Look for neighbors' windows and streetlights. Breaker-tripped is a five-minute fix; street-dark is an outage, and the rest of this list applies.
Minutes 5–15: Close, unplug, fill
- Close the fridge and freezer and leave them closed. A sealed fridge keeps food safe about four hours; a full freezer about forty-eight. Every "just checking" peek spends that budget.
- Unplug the sensitive electronics. TVs, computers, game consoles. When power returns it can arrive with a surge, and unplugging is free insurance. Leave one light switched on somewhere so you will know when the power is back.
- If your water comes from a pump or a tall building, fill things now. A bathtub, pots, the kettle. Flushing and washing water matters by hour six, and it is free in minute ten.
Minutes 15–30: Make base camp
Pick one room — the one you will actually live in until the power returns — and set it up once: flashlights or a lantern in the middle, blankets if it is cold (our winter outage guide covers the cold case in full), water and snacks, the radio. Everything else in the house goes dark and stays that way. A rechargeable flashlight per person ends the era of following one light around the house.
Minutes 30–45: Find out what happened
Information is the difference between an outage and a worry. Check the utility's outage map on your phone once, then put the phone down and save its battery. This is the hand-crank radio's hour: our Portable Multifunctional Emergency Device pulls in local FM news — outage estimates, road conditions, official instructions — for as long as you can turn a crank, and it can top up the phone for the next check-in. The honest limit we print on its page applies here too: it has no NOAA weather band. For a fuller accounting of what it does and does not do, read What a Hand-Crank Radio Can (and Can't) Do in a Blackout.
Minutes 45–60: People, then patience
Knock on one neighbor's door — the older one, or the one with the baby. Call or text family: "power's out, we're fine, saving my battery, will check in at [time]." Then decide, on facts rather than vibes: if the house is holding temperature, the food is sealed and everyone is well, the correct move is usually to settle in. Relocate early only for the real reasons — extreme cold or heat, medical equipment that needs power, or an official instruction. And two never-evers for hour one and every hour after: never run a generator, grill or camp stove indoors, and never call 911 to ask about an outage — that line is for emergencies, and the utility's number is the one you want.
After the first hour
You have light, information, water, a sealed fridge and a room to live in. The outage is now just time passing. If it stretches toward days, the First 72 Hours checklist takes it from there — shelf by shelf, in the same calm order.