Disaster Recovery:
Food Safety During Power Outages

• Back to Disaster Preparedness & Recovery

General Info

For your personal safety, make sure your frozen or refrigerated food supply remains cold. 

• When your power is off, try to keep your refrigerator and freezer doors closed. If possible, wrap foods in newspapers or blankets and bring them to a freezer locker facility.
• If this isn't possible, leave the food in your freezer and cover the freezer with blankets or quilts, making sure not to cover the freezer vent openings.
• Packing any available freezer space with crumpled paper helps it to stay cold longer.
• When the door of a fully packed freezer stays closed, food will remain frozen for 2 days. If the freezer is half full, it will last one day.
• A large freezer stays cold longer than a small freezer. A freezer packed with meat stays cold longer than a freezer full of bread.

For more information, contact the USDA hotline at 1-800-535-4555.

(Adapted from DH1918)

Top

Safe Food Handling

It's hard to tell when foods are safe.  If you think a food might be bad, throw it out!

Here are some food safety tips:

• Drink only bottled or treated water until your normal water supply has been certified safe.
• Always wash your hands with drinkable water before touching foods, and make sure counter tops are clean.
• Scrub fresh fruits and vegetables with a detergent solution:  remove all silt; soak items in a solution of 2 teaspoons household bleach per quart of water for 15 minutes; rinse with drinkable water before peeling.
• If possible, cook fruits and vegetables before eating.
• Always wash your can opener with soap and drinkable water before and after each use.
• Do not leave perishable food out of the refrigerator for more than 2 hours before eating it.

When in doubt, throw it out.

(Adapted from DH1921)

Top

Refrigerated Foods

Once your power has gone off, any refrigerated foods you have will soon spoil and must be thrown away.

• Throw out the following foods if they have been in a closed refrigerator without power — for 12 hours or more:
  • chopped meats, poultry, seafood, dairy products and all cooked foods.
  • any refrigerated foods which have been at room temperature for more than 2 hours must also be thrown out.

• Some foods, such as uncured sausage, must be cooked before they are completely thawed, because they contain no preservatives.
• Cook all unspoiled meats immediately. Large, solid, un-boned pieces of fresh beef or lamb are least susceptible to fast spoilage.
• If custards, gravies, creamed foods, chopped meats, poultry and seafood reach room temperature, discard them immediately. They are very dangerous.

(Adapted from DH1924)

Top