In my town there are a few lessons to be learned, like making sure gas stations, grocery stores and the two local banks have generators and robust connections for cashless payments. We live in a cashless society these days and stores can't operate without power, so some business in each community has to be designated as essential services and if the government has to give them a grant to do it then they should. It should be a no brainer for some though, the local superstore lost tens of thousands of dollars in frozen food, a generator would be a fraction of that cost. Perhaps their insurance companies should take notice? Power will go off here, no matter how robust the power grid, we have hurricanes most falls here and with climate change these extreme weather events will only get worse. Even if the government just had mobile generators on trailers and made a requirement for easy hook up to the gas stations for auxiliary power. This should be done on a national level, so we can surge standardized equipment to local disasters. We need to make sure essential services like banking, some gas stations and grocery stores have generators and are linked by a robust network, even if the banks were open people could get cash, since most people have a local account.
The province of Nova Scotia and PEI had their electrical grids wrecked from end to end, both provinces were completely without power, and it will be a while before it is restored to some communities that were harder hit than mine, we had relatively little damage in town, trees down and some damage to wires, but not much. In Glace Bay the wind blew so hard it snapped off the power poles, the trees full of leaves never stood a chance, it will be quite a while until power is restored there. So, we need to be better prepared because it will happen again.