I live in an area where we are fraught with harsh winter weather. It’s not like the people who live in the south, and a couple of times through the summer, they worry about hurricane leaving them in the dark, or a possible tornado. We live with frigidly cold weather that can shut the power off a couple of times a month. We also aren’t just living without lights for a couple of days, but when the power goes off, we don’t have any heating either. There are many homes that have two sources of heating, and one does not need electricity to run. I find that either way, it is a necessity to have the heating and the generator and emergency lighting serviced at least once a year to ensure that it is always running in the winter. There are things that can happen that would knock out the heating, but that is unavoidable. Regular maintenance and repair can inhibit a lot of the avoidables. I remember hopping out of bed in the middle of the night and running from the bedroom to the bathroom, so you had less time out in the cold and on the frigid floors. I would run to the thermostat and crank up the heat, so it would be warmer before I took a shower. I can’t imagine going through that and not have the thermostat respond and the furnace doesn’t turn on. My mom and dad would not only have the regular maintenance done on the furnace, but they put the HVAC company on speed dial. That way they could call him if they even had a strange noise coming out of the furnace.