Don't live in the PNW then. Soil conditions make undergrounding utilities very expensive, and there's lots of trees near power lines. My first winter we had a 60 hour stretch with no utility power. The CenturyLink DSL remote terminal has no batteries, so if I lose utility power, I also usually lose internet (but I've had two power outages due to a downed line between the RT and my house so far). Most of the cell towers have batteries, but only 2-4 hours worth and then I've got no comms. My house has a backup generator, but it doesn't serve the well, so if I want water, I've got to drag a portable generator out there. A lot of my neighbors have generators, but not all of them.
Oh, and then there was the time a building contractor accidentally took out the underwater cable connecting CenturyLink to Seattle... turns out they don't have multiple paths for that, that was about 48 hours of no internet for me there too. I remember some cell towers didn't work, but I can't remember if it was by tower or by carrier.
I think there is a gap in awareness of this depending on where people live. My rural hometown has frequent power outages, so many people have backup generators to at least keep the furnace running.
The town got popular with city people going remote during the pandemic, many of whom bought houses. I was visiting my parents a couple of years ago when the power went out for 18 hours or so during a deep cold snap. I was shocked that none of the new neighbors–who had recently completed huge costly renovation projects–had bothered to install an automatic generator.
Yeah. I don't know the exact numbers but having power out for 9 hours a year is not a freak event where I live in semi-rural New England and my impression is that it isn't for my colleagues in North Carolina either. Branches and trees come down on powerlines. I had a big tree come down in a windstorm a few months back. Lucky it didn't hit anything of mine or my neighbor or might have been a couple days.
