Things that don't work without electric power:
* Refrigeration. For a 6-12 hour power outage, leaving the doors closed is sufficient. For 1-3 days, fridge temperatures may be maintained by buying bags of ice, but not a freezer.
* Emergency communication. Landline phones might still function, depending on exactly where the breakage occurred. Cell phones have 24-48 hours of battery power at the most.
* Central heating. Even a gas furnace requires electricity for its controller.
* Kitchen ranges (conditional). For a gas range, this depends on whether you have a lighter or matches.
A power outage disrupts normal life. During a power outage, you cannot cook food, cannot preserve food, and cannot heat your home. Depending on the duration, sheltering away from home may be the less disruptive option.
But FWIW, as someone who is from Texas who lost power for 5 days during Uri and nearly a week for the latest freeze this winter, I wholeheartedly agree. Not sure how I would have made it during Uri without gas - even with gas, we couldn't run our heater (system still needs electricity to run the fans, thermostats, etc.) but we could run a gas fireplace, which kept our house temp just high enough to keep our pipes from bursting. I still shudder from all the pics of people with icicles dripping from their ceiling fans.
In my country, we had a strange mix of humid air hitting a cold air front, so one side of the country had rain, the other had snowfall, and in between you had frozen rain...
The result? This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2Gr_RKN4Os (ignore the weird music).
This is what the power lines looked like: https://www.postojna.si/Datoteke/Slike/Novice/123958/l_12395...
Was it a problem? Sure. But not a huge once, since everyone in the rural area was familiar with power issues even from the yugoslav era, wood furnaces are still common, even in houses with central heating (most nowadays), and well.. the country of ~2mio pop. has ~162k voulonteer firefighters, and fallen trees were removed, roads were cleared, and due to a lot of shitty wood, the toilet paper was cheap :)
Now we're looking at this (article here), and germany banning gas, oil and wood heating, and many other countries following, and even a localized event or just some operator fuckup can cause a huge catastrophy. (also, I might have a slight bias, since I know how the infrastructure works and many people who operate it, and it's a miracly we don't have more outages.... same for the internet itself... the core of the internet is based on routers saying "This is me, i own this IP block, just send me the traffic" and all the other routers believing it and doing what it's said... so yeah)
I guess it depends on where you live! But to me it's certainly iffy to ask people to just be ok with being helpless if unpredictable stuff happens.
Two decades and a half ago, the Quebec grid was completely fubar* for the most part of January due to freezing rains too so it's not super uncommon.
*worse than Texas 2 years ago as the electricity infrastructure physically collapsed, literally.
I’m not saying the power going out is no big deal. I’m saying he’s not being overly dramatic.
When the entire power goes down for an extended period, people can and do freeze, or suffer the effects of poisoning or fire, from less safe forms of heat used out of desperation. (BBQ grill or wood/trash fire indoors, etc.) The Quebec/New England region grid collapse during the 1998 ice storm was particularly bad with dozens dead. Certainly an atypical event, but many do plan for that eventuality in some way, whether by having backup heat or hopefully knowing someone who does.
I got solar, a powerwall, and a wood stove.
(I also have a gas stove, but I wish I put the money into buying an extra powerwall.)
Gas systems could make a backup, but don't unless they're designed to, and even if they do, you're gonna have a cheaper time installing just the one system than multiple. A generator, or a community generator with rollover practice is the right answer.
You don't see hospitals making every other room gas so they can survive a power outage. Instead, they have a generator
I had an annoying experience with this during a multi-day outage in Alaska last year. We did have other options including a generator, but I'm not a fan of being patronized by an appliance.
https://i.imgur.com/rHDaZxm.png <- something like this was standard, also back in the time the colors were browner ( eg. https://i.imgur.com/RJkq5GK.png ) :)
The modern variants look more like this: https://i.imgur.com/iJvKQjy.png or with inductive heat instead of resistive: https://i.imgur.com/BOetXJz.png
I remember only one gas outage (some repair work done somewhere and they closed the valves) but there were quite a few power outages, where you had to use a lighter.
I also have a gas grill and a camping stove for emergencies (and for camping).
If you use gas and your neighbours use electricity, and there's suddenly a power outage, you can help your neighbors and heat/cook their food too,... or in case of a gas system outage, they can help with yours. If you heat with gas, you don't freeze even with a power outage, and can still buy a cheap electric heater with a gas outage... if you heat with electricity, you can atleast try to find someone with gas heat to let you sleep over and not freeze.
Banning everything except electricity is just calling for a catastrophy.
(yes yes, i know, old heaters will stay, this applies only to new construction, but in 30 years, most old devices will be replaced too)
edit: i don't know why the downvotes... probably not many people from texas here... or anywhere else in the world... or maybe people think that NY is somehow immune to such outages