Last Thursday at about 10 p.m. we lost power at our house. Thinking nothing of it, we snuggled up in our blankets and promptly fell asleep. At about 3a.m., I woke up to my poor dog being sick. Our house was freezing!! I had to put on a head lamp to find my doggy's sick pile and clean it up. Pour Scout was shivering so we all climbed back into bed together and were all nice and toasty from each other's body heat. I couldn't belive it when we awoke at 6 a.m. and the power still wasn't back. FREEZING! FREEZING! FREEZING! Good thing we have a battery operated radio and was able to flip it on a hear that there was a huge blackout in the west end of Toronto. Luckily power had been restored at my dad's house, so we went over to get warm (and raid his fridge - there's always much better food over there!). This little bump in everyone's daily routine got most people in the west end of Toronto thinking about emergency preparedness. Though at our house we were equipped with headlamps, candles and a battery operated radio, that was about it. We had no water in the house and no wood for our fireplace. Though we had spare food, we had no extra fuel for our camping stove to cook it. Had this blackout lasted longer or was city wide, we would have been in some serious trouble. Since then we've bought a few jugs of water, a wind up flashlight, spare food for the dog, a slow-burning candle and some reserve fuel for the camping stove. Oh, and on a green note, think how much electricity and water the west end of Toronto conserved over that clost to 24 hour period. Have you been affected by a long blackout? How did you fare? Are you prepared in case of an emergency? What's in your emergency kit? What should I add to mine?