Holding out 72 hours without power: what Europe asks, and what Haiti's Civil Protection recommends

Holding out for 72 hours without outside help, without power or a network: that is now the advice several European governments give their residents. On 26 March 2025, the European Commission and the EU High Representative launched a "Preparedness Union Strategy" that encourages the public to keep essential supplies for at least 72 hours in an emergency. France published an official guide built around a "72-hour kit" in November 2025, and the United Kingdom relaunched a campaign on 22 October 2026 asking households to be ready for three days of disruption.

For Haiti, the question looks different: a large share of the population already lives without regular electricity, in the middle of hurricane season and a displacement crisis. What are European governments asking, what do they fear, and what do Haitian authorities recommend?

What the European Union is asking

According to the European Commission's press release of 26 March 2025, the strategy contains 30 key actions and an action plan. Under "population preparedness", Brussels wants to encourage the public to take practical measures such as keeping essential supplies for a minimum of 72 hours, to bring preparedness into school curricula and to create an EU Preparedness Day.

The Commission points to "increasingly complex" crises: geopolitical tensions and conflicts, hybrid and cyber threats, foreign information manipulation, climate change and more frequent natural disasters.

France: "the first 72 hours are often the hardest"

The "Tous responsables" guide, published on 20 November 2025 by France's General Secretariat for Defence and National Security (SGDSN), cites more frequent extreme weather, pandemics, wars in Europe and the Middle East, trade tensions and the energy crisis. It says some crises may be natural or technological, others prepared by terrorist groups or even a hostile state.

The document lists the possible concrete effects: prolonged heating and power cuts, phone and internet networks down, difficulty reaching emergency services, payment systems failing, public transport stopped, shortages in shops and petrol stations, food that cannot be kept without a fridge. In a major crisis, the SGDSN writes, rescuers will prioritise the most serious cases, so everyone must be able to protect themselves and their family, "for several days if necessary". The guide adds that "the first 72 hours are often the hardest".

The United Kingdom: three days of supplies

On 22 October 2026, the UK Cabinet Office launched the "Be Ready" campaign, the first stage of a three-year campaign. The government cites last winter's storms and this summer's wildfires, which it says showed how severe weather can disrupt everyday services, from phone signal to water and the internet. Among other steps, it asks households to keep a small supply of non-perishable food and bottled water at home. According to London, the advice to prepare for three days of disruption is also used by France, Ireland and the Netherlands.

The precedent: the Iberian blackout of 28 April 2025

That advice became concrete on 28 April 2025. According to ENTSO-E, the European network of transmission system operators for electricity, mainland Spain and Portugal suffered a total blackout at 12:33; a small area of south-west France was briefly affected. The experts' final report, published on 20 March 2026, identifies not one cause but a combination of factors, including oscillations and gaps in voltage control, which led to fast voltage increases and cascading disconnections of power plants in Spain.

According to Euronews, the outage lasted up to ten hours, cut internet and phone connections, halted trains and shut businesses.

What goes into a 72-hour kit?

The list in France's "Tous responsables" guide is one of the most detailed:

- **Water**: 6 litres per person, bottled; as a last resort, water purification tablets.
- **Food** that keeps and needs no cooking (tins, ready-to-use infant milk, pet food).
- **Health**: everyday medicines, a first-aid kit, spare glasses.
- **Equipment**: battery radio, power bank, spare batteries, phone charger, torch, candles, matches, multi-tool, tin opener, soap.
- **Documents**: photocopies of ID, prescriptions, spare keys and cash "in case cash machines go down".

The guide advises keeping the kit somewhere easy to reach and checking its contents twice a year.

And in Haiti?

The figures show that power cuts are already part of daily life. According to the World Bank's World Development Indicators, 53.9% of Haitians had access to electricity in 2024 (85.6% in towns): nearly one Haitian in two went without.

The country faces other risks too. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Haiti had 1.49 million internally displaced people in August 2026, up from 1.47 million in the previous count. The Atlantic hurricane season runs until 30 November, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC). Haiti's Directorate General of Civil Protection (DGPC) lists hurricanes and tropical storms, earthquakes, floods, landslides, epidemics and major fires among the disasters it handles.

In Les Cayes and Jérémie, electricity is already the exception

The national average hides a harsher reality in the provinces. In October 2024, AyiboPost found that, with the exception of Port-au-Prince, the capitals of all ten departments had been in a blackout for at least two years.
- **September 2019**: "Widespread blackout in the city of Les Cayes for 1 month!", the online outlet Medianou wrote on 23 September 2019, amid galloping inflation and a severe fuel shortage. According to Medianou, power cuts had been part of daily life for thousands of people in the South since Jovenel Moïse took office in 2017, and local EDH officials were staying "almost silent".
- **July 2020**: HaitiLibre described Jérémie residents left in the dark, between prolonged blackouts and a few rare hours of power a day, for lack of fuel or of sufficient generators. Three new 1.3-megawatt generators had been sitting at the plant for almost seven years (26 July 2020).
- **June 2021**: on Wednesday, 23 June 2021, at a press conference filmed by Cayes Infos, the head of EDH's semi-autonomous centre in Les Cayes, Brunache Pierre Dénès, said the situation in Martissant was preventing EDH from getting its fuel. If the authorities did not restore security, he warned, Les Cayes would soon be plunged into a blackout.
- **March 2022**: "The city of Les Cayes plunges back into a widespread blackout!", Medianou wrote on 16 March 2022: the capital of the South had been in an unprecedented blackout for more than two weeks, activity had slowed, and officials at EDH's commercial office in Les Cayes were "powerless in the face of this chronic problem".
- **July 2022**: on Monday, 11 July 2022, according to a Cayes Infos video, the centre's director, by then Charles Jean Harry, and the head of the Bourdet thermal plant, Desilné Gladymir, blamed the supply problems in Les Cayes and the South on the fuel shortage. They asked subscribers to pay their bills so they could get more power.
- **February 2023**: iciHaïti reported that Les Cayes and several neighbouring towns had been in a blackout "for almost 6 months". The South's departmental delegate, Ketnor Estinvil, noted that the state no longer subsidised fuel: a 9,000-gallon truck cost 6.7 million gourdes, while the EDH centre collected less than 4 million. A tanker sent by the government was due to bring power back, "temporarily" (15 February 2023).
- **December 2023**: EDH's semi-autonomous centre in Les Cayes thanked its subscribers for their patience "in the bad times", in a notice posted on its Facebook page on 22 December 2023.
- **October 2024**: the director of the Les Cayes centre, Séné Charles Michaud, told AyiboPost that the country's third-largest city had had no power "for more than two years". The Bourdet plant had stopped because of insecurity and about 72 million gourdes in customer debts; bandits sometimes seized the fuel; only three of the seven generators worked, for 3.4 megawatts. In Jérémie, a resident said the "city of poets" had had no power for about three years (14 October 2024).
- **December 2024**: an accident at the Varreux terminal on the night of 22 December suspended the coastal shipping that carries fuel to the North and South and disrupted power in several provincial cities, according to Le Nouvelliste (26 December 2024).
- **May 2025**: after the Péligre hydroelectric plant was invaded, EDH's output fell to zero from 13 May, plunging the areas it still supplied into a total blackout. According to HaitiLibre, the country's other thermal plants were then either out of service or running out of fuel (16 May 2025).
- **2026**: the roadmap published by ANARSE on 28 January 2026 plans to hand the management of urban grids such as Les Cayes' to private operators from 2027. On 24 June 2026, the Ministry of Public Works (MTPTC) said it had met, together with EDH's management, executives of E-Power about a project to add solar photovoltaic power to their Michel Arthur Volel thermal plant; according to the minister, its technical, economic and financial viability has yet to be studied. On 29 October 2026, the Ministry of Public Works announced that a 15-to-20-megawatt solar pilot project with storage is being prepared for Les Cayes, along with hybrid mini-grids in places including Tiburon, Marfranc, Moron, Chambellan, Beaumont and Dame-Marie, according to HaitiLibre.

Elsewhere, in the South-East, the Gaillard hydroelectric plant (500 kilowatts), which serves the commune of Cayes-Jacmel, had been "completely shut down for about a year" when the Minister of Public Works visited on 20 May 2026, before being brought back into service, according to iciHaïti (13 August 2026). On the local page CAYES Jacmel news, a physician, Dr Enock Célestin, accused EDH in Jacmel on 28 April 2026 of restoring power without warning on the evening of 26 April; it lasted less than 45 minutes and caused material damage. On 15 September 2026, the same page shared a call from a commission handling the plant's problems to residents who had contributed to its repair, to decide how to use the funds.

In the North, in Cap-Haïtien, the country's second city, EDH was supplying only a few hours of power a day in April 2023, according to HaitiLibre: insufficient production, fuel shortages, equipment broken down or never installed. After a technical visit by deputy mayor Patrick Almonor on 17 April 2023, the municipal commission asked EDH's head office and the Ministry of Public Works for a permanent fuel supply and the repair of generators that had been out of order "for too long" (18 April 2023).

Even the capital's grid is affected. On 22 February 2025, EDH announced that a short circuit on the 69,000-volt high-voltage line in the heights of Carrefour-Feuilles had cut supply to the Toussaint Brave substation, leaving Turgeau, Debussy, Pacot, Chemin des Dalles, Avenue N, the Champ-de-Mars area, Avenue Christophe and Avenue Charles Sumner without power; it asked the competent authorities for support. In its series « Haïti, au fil des rues », Le Nouvelliste showed on 28 October 2026 EDH installations on Rue Marcelin and Rue Waag amid "damaged façades, deserted buildings" left by gangs.

For lack of recent public data, NAGO found no figures published in 2025 or 2026 on how many hours of power EDH currently supplies to Les Cayes and Jérémie.

To get by, those who can produce their own electricity. "Those who have the means manage to power their homes," the Jérémie resident told AyiboPost in 2024. According to the US government's commercial guide to Haiti (May 2024), EDH's failures drive demand for inverters, solar panels and batteries, as well as generators; households and businesses often combine a solar installation with a diesel generator. The same document notes that Haiti has exempted solar modules and inverters from import duties since 2017. In 2024, AyiboPost found "a thriving market for generators and solar panels". In the South, Roche-à-Bateau, Port-à-Piment and Coteaux were then getting five hours of power a day from solar panels and generators. In Les Cayes, the Immaculée Conception Hospital, the city's largest, opened a hybrid solar system in November 2023. Before that, its medical director said, it was hard to guarantee electricity, partly because of the "exorbitant price of diesel" for the generators (HaitiLibre, 14 November 2023). No public source consulted, however, puts a figure on the share of households in Les Cayes or Jérémie with solar equipment.

In 2026, EDH also issued statements on its prepaid meters. In a statement dated 30 March 2026, it said it had received many complaints about the installation and management of these meters; according to EDH, they meet international technical standards, no technical problem affecting their integrity has been found, and the concerns stem mainly from the change in billing, now based on actual consumption, visible and verifiable by each user. EDH pledged to step up information and support at every stage, from application to activation. On 21 October 2026, it announced that subscribers can now buy their electricity remotely, online or by phone, using Plop Plop, Natcash, MonCash, Kash Paw or a Visa or Mastercard card; it gives 8777, free by call or text, for information.

What Civil Protection recommends

Asked how the public can prepare, the DGPC gives four instructions on its official website:

- **Follow the recommendations of local authorities.**
- **Take part in simulation exercises.**
- **Have an emergency kit** with water, food, medicines, a torch and important documents.
- **Identify the safe areas and designated shelters** in your area.

In an emergency, the DGPC gives the number (509) 28 12 8100 and its official X account, @Pwoteksyonsivil. To get involved, it invites people to sign up as volunteers with their communal Civil Protection office.

The DGPC's advice therefore matches the core of the European lists: water, food, medicines, light and papers. The European guides add a battery radio, a power bank and cash, for when the grid, phones and electronic payments fail at the same time.