My parents grew up in families who periodically lived with relatives who simply didn't have electricity. Warmth came from a fireplace, cooking was done on a fire stove. Then, when they got back home, their boiler for the shower/bath still was heated with fire. I was so scared of that boiler, because the fire stove(?) was black. The boiler itself was white though.

Japan had a lot of power outages when I was living there. I don't known for sure, but most of it surely was an automated response to earthquakes, while the minority was actual power lines snapping. This rarely happens there though, because most of their power lines - both urban and intercity ones - hang in the air instead of being buried in the ground to protect them from the earthquakes.