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Yep.

I went through something similar, in about the same time, on the other side of the country, in my little mountain resort town for five days. Three forest fires around the town burned down the main power lines, phone lines, etc going into and out of the town; closed the three paved roads into /out of town making evacuation nearly impossible for anyone who didn’t know the dirt back roads that were still safe.

The stores shut down immediately: “our head office won’t let us sell anything without the computer system being up, because it will screw up the inventory”. (plus, their clerks had no clue of how to make change without the computer telling them how much to give. No gasoline could be pumped.

Water ran out the second day.

Emergency services had no backup generator. I loaned the Police Department one of my generators so that they could run the base station radio. A contractor with his own gravity fed fuel tanks kept the police and fire departments vehicles running.

The regional airport had no backup power for either their radios or night landing lights.

Only the hospital had a functioning generator,and it ran out of fuel on the third day.

It was an intense several days.

After it was all over, the town and the airport got Federal Grants of a couple of million dollars for generators , emergency fuel supplies etc.

Two years later, the same thing happened again.... and guess what?!?, They STILL had no generators. They did have a hundred gallon gravity gasoline tank for the police vehicles, and a hundred gallon diesel tank for the fire engines. That didn’t last long, of course. And I once again loaned the PD a generator to run the base station.

No one seemed to wonder where all the Grant money really went.

After another big federal grant, a few years later, all the emergency services finally were fairly well prepared. But even now, if the power goes out, all the grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants shut down, with no backup power, no computers, and clerks that still couldn’t make change on their own for a $5.00 sale if you handed them a ten dollar bill, even if the stores did open.