What to do during a long outage
A couple of hours without power is an inconvenience for most households. The longer it runs, the more three things start to matter, usually in this order: food, water, and anything medical that needs electricity.
Fridge and freezer
The single most important rule: keep the door shut. A closed fridge holds its temperature for about four hours. A full freezer holds for roughly 48 hours, a half-full one for about 24. Every time you open the door, those numbers get shorter.
If your freezer is mostly empty, filling the space with bottles of water helps: the bigger the frozen mass, the longer the cold lasts.
When the power returns, do not rely on smell or appearance to decide what to throw away. The bacteria that cause food poisoning do not necessarily change how food looks, smells, or tastes. Temperature is what matters.
Throw away: meat, chicken, fish, milk, yoghurt, soft cheese, egg dishes, cooked leftovers, and opened tins — if they have been above fridge temperature for more than four hours.
Usually fine: unopened tins, fresh fruit and vegetables, butter and margarine, hard cheeses, jam, pickles, bread. These are things that keep at room temperature anyway.
Frozen food: if it still has ice crystals and feels cold, it can be refrozen. If it has fully thawed and gone warm, throw it out. Meat that thawed and refroze may look fine, but it is not worth the risk.
When in doubt, throw it out. A pot of food costs less than food poisoning.
Water
Many homes in Northern Cyprus draw water from a tank using an electric pump. When the power goes, whatever is already in the roof tank keeps flowing under gravity, but the pump cannot refill it.
In practice that means: when the outage starts, you have as much water as your tank holds, and when that runs out the tap goes dry.
If it looks like the outage will be a long one, fill some containers early. Keep drinking water separate from water for cleaning and the toilet. A bucket of spare water is enough to flush once.
When the power comes back, the first water through may run cloudy. Sediment from the bottom of the tank can get stirred up; running it for a few minutes usually clears it.
Medical devices
This is the most serious item on the list, and it needs planning before an outage, not during one.
If someone in the house uses an oxygen concentrator, a CPAP machine, a medicine pump, an electric wheelchair, or medication that must be refrigerated — insulin, for example — an outage is more than an inconvenience.
Worth doing now:
- Find out your device's backup power situation. Some have an internal battery, some do not. Know how long it lasts.
- Keep a cool bag and ice packs for refrigerated medication. For insulin, check the manufacturer's guidance on how long it may be kept at room temperature; most products tolerate a period out of the fridge, but it varies by product and should be confirmed from the leaflet.
- If the device is critical, talk to your doctor or pharmacist in advance about where to go during a long outage.
- Keep your phone and a power bank charged.
This site is not the right place for advice on any of that — your medical team is. The point here is only that it should be thought about before the power goes, not after.
Staying cool in summer
In the summer months, losing air conditioning can be the hardest part of a long outage.
Close shutters and curtains during the day; keeping the sun out works far better than trying to cool a room afterwards. The coolest part of the house is usually the ground floor and any north-facing room.
Drink plenty of water rather than waiting until you feel thirsty. Older people and small children are affected by heat sooner, so check on them through the day.
Once it is dark and cooler outside than in, open the windows.
Light and power
A torch is safer than a candle. A candle knocked over is a genuine cause of fires during outages, so if there are children or pets in the house, use a torch.
Charge your phone early. If an outage has been announced, top up your power bank before it starts. You can charge from a car, but never run the engine in a closed garage to do it.
Generators
If you use a generator, two rules are not negotiable.
Never run it indoors. That includes a garage, a balcony, a basement, or right outside a window. The carbon monoxide in the exhaust is colourless and has no smell; this is how people die. A generator belongs outdoors, well away from doors and windows.
Never wire it straight into the house circuits. Without a proper transfer switch, a connection like that can feed electricity back into the network and put the crews working on it in danger. That is a job for a qualified electrician.
When the power returns
The moment the power comes back is when the risk to your appliances starts. What to do about it is in our surge protection guide.
To see what is happening in your district, check the front page, and for past outages, the archive.