Essential / useful items during power cut?

[Yamalt]

Aside from candles and torches, what items would you consider a must have or a would love to have during a power cut?

For context, we’ve had 3 power outages in the past week, each for over 3/4 hours. It’s made me slightly wonder if this is going to be a thing now for various reasons..

Love to hear some recommendations!

We have a power cut box containing torches, candles, glow sticks, a power bank, solar power bank and gas stove

Camping lanterns and power banks for phones. That's all. Chucked out candles as they aren't safe and leave smoke marks on walls and ceiling.

Guessing we might be in the same postcode if you’ve just got your power back….

If so….. There were a lot of UK power network vans in the field on the new road by the sports centre so I suspect the “fault” may have been during some works… anyway… it was quite a long time the other day before I remembered we had a gas hob and coffee pot that works on it…

I’m going to stock up on batteries - if it went off in the evening we’ve got a couple of camping lanterns that have enough light for reading but would probably run flat after a bit..

Radio, candles wine. We have had a couple of longish power cuts, roughly once a year, and spend them pie eyed.

Spark lighter for gas hob.

A standalone Calor stove is a MUST!
Blankets
Hot chocolate/biscuits
Small portable gas camping stove
Wok ready noodles/dim sum
Beans/bread/grated cheese
Cards deck

Blankets, warm clothes, camping stove and food that can easily be heated

Spark lighter for a gas hob
Batteries
Gas hob
Batteries
Wind up radio and torch
Batteries
Low energy torches
Batteries
Stove top kettle
and a variety of batteries

Power Bank- kept charged
Entertainment... when we had power cuts last year the 4G network also went
Matches/lighter to heat water (have a gas hob)

The car so we can drive to the pub.

Head torch

Back up generator
Bunker

Charged up kindle/phone
Supply of music/audiobooks
Candles/torches etc
Bottles of water
Flask
Chocolate
Powerbank
Biscuits

Used to live in Africa and our power cuts were horrendous .... too hot in house at night so would sit outside and be bitten by mosquitoes

Save up for one of these Portable battery

Your my kind of people

We have an old school landline phone that doesn't need electricity, a gas lantern, small gas stove, lots of candles and glass jars to put them in. In general try to ensure all torches, power packs etc are charged but they are used for lots of things not just power cuts.

We were out for 10 days a couple of years ago. Some sort of stove or barbecue; lightweight (camping) pans / kettle to heat water & food; flasks to store water or warm food. Sanitiser, or baby wipes. Lots of warm clothing, torches.
If you are somewhere where this is a regular occurrence, a source of heat, and an analogue phone . Plus transport that does not rely on electricity.

Keep power banks charged and have camping lanterns which stand independently as well as torches.

Other than that keep everything (like Bluetooth speaker and laptop) charged when you do have power.

Your WiFi will go off so if you can use mobile data in your location keep that topped up.

Otherwise it depends a lot on whether everything else is electric or gas or oil or whether you have log burners etc. etc. If your oven is gas - matches to light it instead of the electric spark. If your oven is electric you might want to consider whether a small camping burner (to boil water for tea / coffee and cook a very simple warm meal like pasta and a glass of tomato sauce) with a gas cylinder would be 1) safe 2) useful in your specific home. Otherwise of course a few store cupboard foods you can prepare without power.

I'd also think a bit about keeping cupboards well stocked and running down foods which need cooking and spoil fast in the freezer if I expected regular long power cuts - especially use up any joints of meat you have frozen when you have power as if they defrost and you can't cook them they'll spoil.