The lights went out

in this state twelve months ago.
I was giving a friend a cup of tea. She had lost her husband not long beforehand and, as was her habit, had called in for a cup of tea on her way home from teaching. 
We have a gas cook top and an electric oven. It was a deliberate choice. My mother was of the view that, if you had both gas and electricity then you always had the possibility of making that cup of tea. She didn't actually drink tea herself but that was beside the point. Other people do. They might need it.
And W... needed those cups of tea. She has moved to the other side of the city now and we don't see her as often but, when she can, she will come for lunch and talk to the Senior Cat about those things which are more of their generation than mine.
As the power outage was still on when she left and obviously wide spread I gave her a thermos of hot water as well. It was just as well. It was hours before the power went on again. 
There was renewed talk then of the need for a state-wide "disaster plan". Nothing has happened.
There are other parts of the world where there are disaster plans. There are disaster plans for various scenarios. They work with varying degrees of efficacy - some of them are very little use but others are better.  There is always some chaos in a disaster but at least something is there.
I wonder how we would manage here though? Yesterday the internet connection kept dropping out. It dropped out seven times in the afternoon alone and then twice more before I gave up and switched off. It is off as I am typing this at 7am. I may get lucky and publish it in a moment - when I have had to manually reconnect yet again. I wonder what will happen in the summer when I am doing my turn on emergency duty for a group of people with disabilities who are alone during the day? Doing duty means depending on an internet connection which allows me to monitor a website that will tell me about the need for people to evacuate. So far we have only ever had to evacuate one person - but what if there were more?
I know that the internet connection is not just about power being available. The power didn't go out at all yesterday - but the company which supplies the connection is more concerned with making a profit than providing a reliable service. They know there is nothing customers can do  because all other companies are also intent on providing a minimum service for maximum profit. 
But, in a disaster, that could be a disaster. Our modern world relies heavily on power - power that provides the capacity for people to communicate in all sorts of ways.
We have lost that small village communication capacity. Yes, everyone knew the business of everyone else but it also meant that, when help was needed, it was much more likely to happen.
The power has gone out in more ways than one - and we urgently need a disaster plan before it is too late.