Impact of Prolonged Power Outage on Remote Work and Household

I work fully remotely, and access to reliable power and internet is essential to my ability to do my job and earn a living. I have a limited amount of paid time off, and with the holidays and my son’s school schedule, my husband and I had already planned our time off around the two week school break.

Weather conditions may have been more severe in Boulder, but in our immediate area the conditions were not unusually severe. Our neighborhood has buried power lines. Despite this, we lost power while nearby neighborhoods remained fully operational.

Because of the outage, I had to take two days of unscheduled time off from work. During that time, I moved my children from house to house to find electricity and internet access. My son missed three days of school immediately before a scheduled two week break.

In addition to the loss of work time and school disruption, the extended outage caused the food in our refrigerator and freezer to spoil, resulting in further financial loss.

The outage created significant disruption for our family and directly affected my ability to work and meet my professional responsibilities. I am sharing this to document the real and practical impact this outage had on our household.