I was at a wedding shortly after the Florida's "year of hurricanes' and remember all of us from different parts of the state talking about how we did. One woman told of opening a garage door daily without electricity and sitting in her car to charge her sell phone for 10 minutes a day - how important the cell phone was - and the 10 minutes in the car being the only air conditioning she experienced. Another told of falling asleep, waking up drenched to the sounds of silence ... someone had cut the chains on the generator - the fans had stopped - generator gone...
We had a few instances here when we had the major ice storm a few years back. 10 days with no electricity in frigid temps.
There were a few instances of generators being stolen - fortunately not in our neighborhood.
Having a big dog in the backyard always helps.
after a while, thieves would substitute a running lawnmower for the generator they were stealing so as to not alert the neighbors or chance that a light sleeper would wake up to the sudden lack of noise.