If there had been an ice storm couldn’t she have just put the stuff outside to keep it cool?
I’m not being snarky, I’m a Floridian and have no experience with ice storms :-)
I’ve had experience with winter and summer power outages and each has its challenges.
In winter you get free refrigeration but the challenge is heating safely so that pipes don’t freeze. In summer the challenge is cooling —thankfully not a problem this time as the circulation from the remnants of Irene is pulling in Canadian air/