Like I said the first power outage, the whole block/street/city was blacked out--and while my in-laws had a generator & resided nearby... So my concern was getting my perishables somewhere safely, no matter how neat that stove top would have been to have manually lit--I mean what was there, among a flashlight and all those candles I had lit, what was there I wanted to, or had to cook or could eat? (Besides in a few hours, next day I trawled back to retrieve all that--tiring, to say the least...)
(They are far away in Israel now, and if we have no power here, my dad has no power at his place--in fact, his electricity goes out at about twice the rate as ours, and my friend on the next block once had his power out for days (turning on light switches to, just to forget--No Power!), while one years later, time that next block was Times Square, to our pitch black--felt like passing the blame on some of those self-defrosting upright freezers & other electrical appliances & fancy gadgets those folks had! (LOL!)
Next time, the power worked a bit intermittently, on my side of the street, so across the street a few porch lights were on, and it was just beginning to become dawn, as the streetlights went out--but among my music & stereo conking out & my CD I was trying to enjoy having to be reset, and the air conditioner going on and off, the juice eventually stayed constant...
And when we got new gas meters, there was no gas, so I fried my one egg to go with my burrito (that I microwaved) on my electric griddle... We just had to call the gas company when the gas did go back on, to light the pilots on our water heater & furnace...
-- Dave