Yeah if my heat were 100% electric I’d have to install a wood heating-stove to feel like I wasn’t being irresponsible. Or maybe get a couple portable kerosene heaters.

I think a sensible option, if you live in a place where electrical grids goes out for a couple of days fairly routinely, would be a transfer switch and a generator. If sized well enough you could use it to run a resistance heater (the cheap portable type) to keep one or two rooms warm in an extreme scenario.

Pipes freeze and burst, whole house has to stay warm. It’s not just about comfort or safety.

If you warm up a few rooms to comfortable then it's hard to imagine the rest of the house being at freezing temperature. It's going to be some sort of gradient. But sure, this is a concern/consideration.

My ex-wife had a two-day power outage last month (it was only a few hours at my apartment) during a cold snap. She has gas heat, but the problem is that the heat gets circulated by fans¹ which are powered by—electricity.

She had to get a hotel room for the night because she wasn’t comfortable sleeping with the gas fireplace on.

⸻

1. I would guess that thermostats also powered by electricity not working would add to the complication.

Of course, but gas utility supply means a much smaller generator is needed just to operate the fans and thermostat and much less on-hand fuel is needed to operate the generator.

Natural gas is just a very convenient and very dense source of energy when you need it most.

In the entirety of my life, most of which has been in the Chicago area, I have never seen a home with a generator for the fans and thermostat of a home. For that matter, the only home generator I ever saw was one my grandfather bought which he only used once to see if it worked.

They're pretty common where I live (SE Michigan) because the electrical grid is quite a bit less reliable than the gas distribution network. To the point where 5-10% of customers in the service area lose power in any given big storm.

We have an (almost[1]) all electric house. A year ago we lost power for six days. Last spring we had a generator installed. Over the summer we lost grid power for five days but the generator worked flawlessly the entire time.

I don't like having gas for a number of reasons and if the grid was more reliable we would never have bothered, but, for us, it's just so much more reliable.

[1]: We have two HVAC systems that service different sides of our duplex-ish house. One side is a ground source heat pump, the other is a 95% efficient gas furnace.

It sounds like your house is poorly insulated too ?