Winter snowfalls can reak havoc on a family. Summer thunderstorms can also affect a household greatly. I know this from experience. I grew up in Pennsylvania. We had snowstorms in the winter that would dump a couple feet of snow in a short period of time. Heavy snowfalls resulted in a few days without electricity. Sever thunderstorms, and sometimes tornadoes, would also leave us without electric for a number of days in the summer. No electric meant that we could not cook on the electric stove, watch television, or use the refridgerator or freezer to keep our food cold. But not having electric also meant that we would not have heat or hot water. Even though we heated the home with gas and had a gas hot water tank, we still did not have heat or hot water. Gas furnaces and water heaters use gas, but they require electric to kick on. We used kerosene heaters to heat the house when a storm would knock out our electric service, and once the hot water tank was empty, we had to boil pots of water on the kerosene heaters in order to have hot water.