When the Power Goes Out: Storm and Outage Preparedness for Older Adults in Central Ohio

A summer derecho or a January ice storm can leave a parent without power for days. A one-page plan made in October is worth more than any amount of scrambling later.

By Ray Kessler, Certified Senior Advisor · Published October 9, 2026

The Outage Nobody Planned For

On a hot July evening a line of storms moves through Licking County, and by the time it clears, a tree limb is across a power line two streets from a widow's home in Newark. Her lights are out, the garage door opener will not lift, and the portable oxygen concentrator she uses at night has a battery that lasts a few hours. Her son lives in Dublin, forty minutes away, and her landline is a cordless phone that needs electricity to work. None of these facts is unusual. Together they turn an ordinary storm into an emergency.

Central Ohio is not a hurricane region, but it gets thunderstorm wind damage in summer, tornado watches in spring, and ice or heavy snow in winter. Older adults, especially those who live alone, rely on electricity in ways that are easy to overlook: for oxygen equipment, powered mattresses, refrigerated medication, stair lifts, well pumps in rural parts of Madison and Pickaway counties, and even the phone itself. This guide is about the planning that happens before the weather turns, because that is the only time it is easy.

Start With an Honest Inventory of What Needs Power

Walk through your parent's home with a notebook and write down everything that stops working when the electricity does. Most families are surprised by the length of the list. Common items include a home oxygen concentrator or CPAP machine, an electric hospital bed or lift recliner, a motorized scooter or wheelchair that needs charging, a refrigerator that holds insulin or eye drops, a medical alert pendant that connects through a base station, a cordless landline, an electric garage door, and in many ranch homes a sump pump that keeps the basement dry.

Next to each item, write how long it can run without grid power and what the backup is. A portable oxygen concentrator may have one battery that lasts a few hours; a second battery or a car charger may double that. A manual override on the garage door is often a red cord that nobody has pulled in years, so test it. The goal of this list is not to buy a generator. It is to find the one or two items where a six-hour outage becomes dangerous and focus your effort there.

Tell the Utility Before You Need Help

Electric utilities generally keep a way for customers who depend on life-sustaining equipment to identify themselves, often through a medical certification signed by a physician. That certification is intended mainly to protect against disconnection for nonpayment, and it does not guarantee that your parent will be restored first after a storm. Do not assume it works as a priority list. Still, it is worth completing, and the first call should be to the utility that serves the home, which in central Ohio may be an investor-owned company, a municipal system or a rural cooperative depending on the address. Ask exactly what the program covers and what paperwork is needed, then write down the answers.

Also save the utility's outage-reporting phone number and its online outage map in your phone, and put the number on a card by your parent's phone. If your parent has a medical device that depends on power, tell the oxygen or equipment supplier too; most suppliers have their own after-hours line and a plan for patients who lose power. For cold-weather billing help and shutoff protection, we cover the state programs in our guide on utility help for older adults in central Ohio, which is a separate topic from a storm outage but belongs in the same folder.

Medications and Food: What Actually Spoils

Refrigerated medication is the part of an outage that causes the most worry. Insulin, certain injectable drugs, and some eye drops have manufacturer storage instructions that vary by product, so the safest step is to ask your parent's pharmacist, ahead of time, what each refrigerated medication can tolerate if the power is out for a day or more. Write the answers on an index card and tape it inside the refrigerator door. Keep a small insulated cooler and a few reusable ice packs in the freezer so there is something to move medication into without hunting for supplies in the dark.

For food, the common guidance from food-safety authorities is to keep refrigerator and freezer doors closed as much as possible, because a closed refrigerator keeps food cold for only about four hours and a full freezer holds its temperature longer than a half-empty one. Throw out perishable food that has been above safe temperature for more than two hours. Stock a few days of shelf-stable food your parent will really eat, along with a manual can opener. It is also worth keeping a seven-day supply of daily medications in a spot your parent can reach, since many people cannot easily get to a pharmacy during a prolonged outage or ice storm. Our guide to medication management and Ohio's assisted living rules explains how pill organizers and routines work when staff are involved.

Heat, Cold and the Quiet Dangers of a Dark House

The most serious outage risks for older adults are temperature and carbon monoxide. In January, an unheated house can become dangerously cold within hours, and older adults can have more difficulty sensing and responding to cold. In a summer heat wave, a house without air conditioning can become dangerous just as quickly. Decide in advance where your parent will go if the house becomes unsafe: your own home, a relative's home, or a hotel. Many central Ohio counties and cities open cooling or warming centers during extreme weather, and the best way to learn what is available is to call 211 or your county's emergency management office and ask.

Carbon monoxide poisoning is the hazard that families most often underestimate. Never run a portable generator inside a home, garage or basement, or even near a window, and never use a gas oven, charcoal grill or camp stove to heat a living space. A battery-powered carbon monoxide alarm on each floor is inexpensive, and the batteries should be replaced on a schedule. If your parent does use a generator, a licensed electrician should install a proper transfer switch; connecting a generator to a household outlet can send electricity back into the lines and endanger utility crews.

Communication: The Plan That Works When the Phone Doesn't

The second biggest failure in a storm is communication. Cordless landlines die with the power, cell towers can be congested, and many seniors do not keep a cell phone charged. Buy a corded phone that plugs directly into the wall jack if your parent still has a traditional landline, though some phone service delivered over cable or fiber also depends on power or a battery backup. Keep a charged power bank next to the bed and teach your parent how to use it. A battery-powered or hand-crank NOAA weather radio is a small purchase that provides alerts when the internet is out.

Agree on a simple check-in routine: you will text at a set time, and if there is no reply you will call a neighbor. Write the name and number of that neighbor, along with your own, a physician, a pharmacist and an oxygen supplier, on one laminated page by the phone. If your parent has memory loss, a printed page matters even more, because a stressful night is not the time to rely on memory. Our guide to wandering safety in central Ohio covers extra precautions when a parent with dementia may leave the house in the dark.

A Go-Bag for the Night You Have to Leave

Sometimes the right answer is to leave. Pack a bag now and keep it in a closet: a few days of medications in their original containers, a printed medication list with doses, copies of insurance cards and identification, a list of physicians, glasses and hearing-aid batteries, a phone charger, a change of clothes, and any comfort item your parent needs. If your parent uses oxygen or a mobility device, plan how the equipment will travel with them and where it will be plugged in. Keep a half tank of gas in the car during storm season, because gas stations cannot pump fuel when the power is out.

If your parent lives in an apartment or independent living community, ask management how the building handles outages, whether there is a generator, which systems it powers, and how residents with oxygen are checked. The same question applies when touring any senior community: ask what happens to heating, cooling, elevators and medication storage during an outage, and ask to see the written emergency plan. Ohio's assisted living licensing framework is explained in our licensing guide, and the standards we use to confirm what a community tells us are on our editorial standards page. We do not publish any facility's generator or backup-power details unless the operator states them itself, so confirm directly.

Five Things to Do This Month

First, make the inventory of powered equipment and mark the one or two items that matter most. Second, call the electric utility and the equipment supplier and ask what they offer customers who depend on medical devices. Third, ask your parent's pharmacist about refrigerated medication and write the answers on a card. Fourth, replace smoke and carbon monoxide alarm batteries, buy a weather radio and a corded phone, and put a power bank by the bed. Fifth, set up the neighbor check-in and write down where your parent will go if the house becomes unsafe. A parent who lives alone and has real difficulty with any of these steps is also telling you something about how much support the household needs, and that may be the time to look at help at home or a community with staff on site.

Disclosure: we are a free advisory service, not an emergency agency, utility or medical provider. In an emergency call 911. Details about utility programs and food-safety timing change, so confirm them with the utility, the pharmacist, or your county emergency management office.

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