Puget Sound outage season starts in October, and the households that struggle most are the ones with an 88-year-old on an oxygen concentrator and no plan. Here is what to sort out in the next few weeks.
By Diane Whitfield, CSA · September 20, 2026
Western Washington does not get the ice storms the Midwest gets. What it gets is wind — a low-pressure system spinning in off the Pacific, soaked ground from an atmospheric river the week before, and Douglas firs coming down across distribution lines in Shoreline, Federal Way, Gig Harbor and half of Snohomish County. Puget Sound Energy, Seattle City Light, Snohomish County PUD and Tacoma Power all restore in roughly the same order: transmission first, then substations, then the circuits serving the most customers, then the single-family lines at the end of a wooded cul-de-sac. A parent living alone on a tree-lined street in Normandy Park or Woodinville is, structurally, near the back of that queue.
Most families discover this in the middle of it. The call comes at 9pm, the house is dark and 54 degrees, the cordless phone is dead because the base station needs power, and nobody knows where the medication list is. None of that is hard to solve in September. All of it is hard to solve during the outage.
Start by asking what in your parent's day actually requires electricity. An oxygen concentrator does. A CPAP does. A powered recliner or lift chair does, and for someone who cannot transfer without it, that is a safety issue, not a comfort one. Insulin and some other medications need refrigeration. A stairlift matters if the bedroom is upstairs. A medical alert base unit usually has a battery backup measured in hours, not days — check the label, because families routinely assume it runs indefinitely.
Second: can the house stay warm enough? Gas furnaces still need electricity for the blower, so a gas heat bill does not mean heat during an outage. Older adults lose body heat faster and feel cold later, which is exactly the wrong combination. A house that drops into the low fifties overnight is a real risk for someone frail, and it is also the scenario that sends people to a generator in the garage — the leading cause of carbon monoxide deaths after Northwest storms. Generators belong outdoors, well away from doors and windows, never in a garage even with the door up.
Third: how would you know? If your parent is in Kent and you are in Bellevue, a dead landline and a dead cell battery means silence, and silence during a storm reads the same as everything being fine.
Call the utility and ask how to register a customer who depends on electrically powered medical equipment. Every major Puget Sound utility keeps some form of life-support or medical-equipment customer list. Register — and then understand clearly what it does and does not mean. It generally means the utility has a record and may attempt contact; it does not guarantee faster restoration, and utilities say so plainly. Treat it as one layer, not the plan.
Build the plan around the oxygen supplier, not the utility. If your parent uses a concentrator, call the durable medical equipment company now and ask what backup they provide: how many hours of cylinder supply they will leave in the home, how to request more before a forecast storm, and what their emergency line is. Suppliers generally expect a several-hour cylinder reserve and will discuss a storm plan if you call — in September. In the middle of a regional outage, their phones are not answering quickly.
Then the ordinary things, which matter more than they sound: a charged power bank and a cheap corded phone that works without power, flashlights rather than candles, a three-day supply of medications kept ahead rather than refilled the week they run out, a printed medication and diagnosis list on the refrigerator, blankets and layered clothing staged where they can be reached in the dark, and a written note of who to call in what order. Sign up for the utility's outage alerts on your own phone, not just your parent's.
The single most useful thing a family can decide in advance is the threshold at which the parent leaves the house. Not "we'll see how it goes" — an actual line. Something like: if power is out more than six hours and the indoor temperature is below 65, or at any point if oxygen backup drops below half, we go. Then name the destination: your house, a sibling's, or a King County, Snohomish County or Pierce County warming or emergency shelter, which local emergency management opens during extended outages and announces through county alert systems and 2-1-1.
Deciding this in advance matters because the decision is much harder at 11pm in a cold house, with a parent who does not want to be a bother and an adult child who is not sure whether this counts as an emergency. Write the threshold down. Tell the sibling in another state what it is.
A storm is a stress test, and it often shows a family something they already half-knew. If the honest answer to "could she manage three days alone without power?" is no, and the answer would also be no for a snow week, a norovirus week, or a broken furnace in February, then the outage is not really the problem — living alone is.
That does not automatically mean a move. In-home care, a personal emergency response system, or a family member staying through storm weeks all buy real margin. But it is worth asking the question while it is theoretical. Licensed assisted living communities and adult family homes in Washington carry 24-hour staffing and emergency procedures, and you can ask any community you tour exactly what its backup power arrangement is, what it runs, and how long it runs — a fair question, and the answer tells you a lot.
If the storm season prompts that conversation in your family, a local advisor can walk through the options with you at no cost, including which Puget Sound communities have current openings and which accept Apple Health.
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