The power or heat is off. How do I stay warm?

Four things, in this order: what never to burn indoors for warmth, where to go and who to call, how to keep a body warm with what you have, and what to do if a bill is why it is off. Carbon monoxide comes first because it gives no warning you can sense.

What never to burn indoors for warmth. Keep the gas oven for cooking and the vents open asks you to read its safety part first, and so does this answer. Carbon monoxide has no colour, no smell and no taste. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns that people who are asleep or have been drinking can die from it before they feel anything, and names who is more likely to get sick: babies, older people, and people with heart disease, anaemia or breathing problems. Its own line is short: never heat your house with a gas oven. The US Fire Administration says the same about any oven; an electric oven makes no carbon monoxide, but with one the danger is fire, so the oven page’s answer is the same: the warmth left after dinner, yes; the oven as a heater, no.

Anything that burns fuel can put carbon monoxide in a house, the oven page says: some appliances only when something is wrong, others every time they are used indoors. Call before the shutoff date gives the list for a cold house with the power off: do not heat it with a gas oven or stove, a grill or barbecue, or a camping stove, and never run a generator indoors or within 20 feet (about 6 metres) of a window, door or vent. The CDC also says never to burn charcoal indoors, never to use a portable gas camp stove indoors, and never to run a generator inside the home or garage, even with the doors and windows open; the UK’s NHS says the same about barbecues and camping stoves.

For light, the CDC says to use battery lights rather than candles during a power cut, because of fire. What actually keeps you warm outside adds that candles and portable stoves used for warmth are how house fires start, particularly near curtains, bedding, or an animal that will knock something over. One person’s candles-under-a-flowerpot heater, Call before the shutoff date says, drew the answer that a candle makes very little heat, far less than a heater or even a human body, and that page says never to leave an open flame burning near small children.

People split on one point, and the oven page does not leave the choice open. Some people say a gas oven for heat should never be done. On the other side, one person says that when there is no other heat and freezing is close, a gas oven with a window cracked beats hypothermia, and the warning against the oven, as some people put it, makes the same exception: avoid it unless it is life or death. The CDC and the US Fire Administration make no exception, and the page gives the reason: a cracked window does not tell you how much carbon monoxide is in the room, and the person it poisons may be asleep. What the oven can give you safely is the warmth left after you cook, once it is switched off and its burner is out; the page says that warmth is less than it feels, and that if you open the oven door, small children and pets stay well back while it cools.

Put a carbon monoxide alarm near where people sleep. The CDC says battery-operated or battery-backup alarms near every sleeping area, and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission adds one on every level of the home; the UK’s NHS says to have one in each room with an appliance that burns gas, oil, coal or wood. One person warns that an alarm with no battery can fail in a power cut, which can be the very night an oven or a heater gets used for warmth.

If an alarm sounds, or people in the home have a headache, dizziness, sickness, weakness, sleepiness, confusion, chest pain or breathlessness that ease when they step outside, get everyone out into fresh air now; switch off the oven or heater on the way only if it takes a second. Then call from outside. In the US, call 911. In the UK, call the National Gas Emergency line on 0800 111 999 (0800 002 001 in Northern Ireland) if a gas appliance may be leaking, and 999, or go to A&E, if someone is struggling to breathe, confused, collapsing or has chest pain; NHS 111 is for milder symptoms. Elsewhere, call your local emergency number. Do not go back inside until you are told it is safe.

Go where it is warm, and ask for help. The oven page’s first answer, safest first, is to go where it is warm if you can: a friend, family, or a public building such as a library while it is open. The CDC’s advice for a home that is too cold is the same, friends or a community shelter. In the US, calling 211 can point you to local help, including warming centres where your area runs them; the shutoff page describes it as the free phone line where a person looks up what help exists where you live. In the UK, ask your energy supplier about its Priority Services Register, and Citizens Advice can help with what support you are owed.

Warm the person, not the house. The oven page puts the CDC’s advice for the cold first because it needs no power: several loose layers of clothing with a hat and gloves, dry blankets, and warm drinks that are not alcohol.

Call before the shutoff date has the same idea for a house that will not warm. Some people describe it: choose one room, and inside it make a smaller warm space, such as a tent, a blanket fort or layered bedding, and keep the youngest and the oldest people in it, because a small space holds body heat and a large cold house does not. Another adds layers of clothing, hot water bottles, and time in warm public places, such as a supermarket cafe. A fan does not add heat: it moves the heat that is already in the room.

Some people say a hot water bottle is cheap warmth with no cord to fail. A UK consumer-testing group advises letting boiled water cool for at least five minutes before filling one, and one person says to wrap an uncovered one in a towel, because it can burn. Never use one with an electric blanket (Electrical Safety First, London Fire Brigade, an NHS trust). The shutoff page says a bottle filled with hot, not boiling, water is for older children and adults, never for a baby’s bed.

For a baby under one year, the shutoff page changes the advice. Loose blankets, quilts and pillows in a baby’s sleep space can suffocate them, so the US Safe to Sleep campaign’s advice is to dress the baby for the temperature of the room, with a wearable blanket or an extra layer of clothing instead of anything loose, and to keep the sleep space clear. Too many layers can overheat a baby, and a sofa or its cushions is not a safe place for a baby to sleep.

If the power is on and only the heat is off. An electric space heater goes straight into a wall socket, never an extension cord or power strip, at least three feet from bedding, curtains and furniture, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission says, and off when you leave the room or go to sleep, the Fire Administration adds; a US fire-safety standards body asks for a three-foot zone around a space heater that children stay out of. A heated blanket or pad warms the bed, but heated blankets and pads can start fires and burn skin; read the safety part of Warm the bed before you get into it before you plug one in.

If a bill is why it is off. Call before the shutoff date is the page for a shutoff notice: call the utility before the date, say you cannot pay it all, and ask what payment plan or hardship program it can put you on. A plan is easiest before the date and much harder after it, but it is not too late once the power is off. One person who asked after the shutoff was refused a plan and told the reconnection fee came first. What still works then: the crisis part of LIHEAP; charities and churches, some of which, one person says, can pay over the phone so the service comes back quickly; and, in some states, a weather rule that one person says can force a reconnection when the forecast drops below freezing, though they add it may apply only where electricity is needed for heating, and can lapse when the temperature rises again. Ask the utility for the exact amount it needs to reconnect, in writing if you can, and take that figure to 211 and the charities, because it is the number they will be trying to cover.

LIHEAP is the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which each state runs through local agencies. When that page was written, in September 2026, Congress had not finished deciding LIHEAP’s funding for the year starting 1 October 2026, so the program in your state may be open, may open late, or may run out: check before you count on it, with 211 or your state’s energy-assistance office. The federal law behind it says a state’s crisis help must give an eligible household some assistance that resolves the crisis within 48 hours of applying, and within 18 hours if the situation is life-threatening; say that you have a shutoff notice and give the date on it. A former caseworker says the eligibility rules are strict, and one person says an application can take a week or more.

Some households can pause a shutoff outright, and you find out by asking. One person says a doctor’s letter that electricity is needed for a medically vulnerable child’s health may make the utility turn the power back on and allow more time to pay, 21 days in their example; another says a baby in the home, someone on oxygen, or medical equipment that needs power can trigger a temporary hold, in their account 30 days at a time and up to three times a year. These are state rules, and they differ. Some people say some places ban cutting off power or heat in the cold months; one gives November to April as an example, and another says these protections usually end in March. They can come with conditions, so tell the utility who lives in your home, what you earn, and whether anyone depends on power for their health, and ask which protections you qualify for.

In the UK, Citizens Advice says a supplier in England must give you the chance to pay the debt through a payment plan before it disconnects you, that disconnection is rare because the supplier will usually offer a prepayment meter instead, and that between 1 October and 31 March a supplier cannot disconnect someone of State Pension age who lives alone or only with other pensioners or children under 18. To disconnect you without an agreement, a supplier has to apply to a court for a warrant to enter your home. Citizens Advice has separate guidance for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Who this answer is not for. Anyone with the carbon monoxide signs above, a carbon monoxide alarm sounding, or a smell of gas: that is the get-out-and-call part, not a warming problem. Anyone with the cold’s danger signs, which the CDC lists as shivering, exhaustion, confusion, fumbling hands, memory loss, slurred speech and drowsiness in adults, and bright red, cold skin with very low energy in babies: those need emergency help, 911 in the US, 999 in the UK, your local emergency number elsewhere. If skin has gone white or greyish and hard or numb, that is frostbite. Get indoors. Use warm, not hot, water, at a temperature that feels comfortable to an unaffected hand, or body heat, an armpit for fingers. Do not use a heating pad, heat lamp, stove, fireplace or radiator, and do not rub the area or rub snow on it: frostbitten skin is numb, so it can be burned badly without the person feeling any of it. Do not walk on frostbitten feet if you can avoid it, and get it looked at by a doctor afterwards even if it seems to have come right.

A sick baby or toddler in a cold house is not a problem that more blankets solve. The shutoff page does not cover what to do when a house gets dangerously cold overnight before help arrives, or how to care for a sick small child with no power. The CDC’s advice for a home that is too cold is to go to friends or a community shelter, and a sick baby or toddler in a cold house is a reason to call a doctor today (NHS 111 in the UK), or 911 in the US or 999 in the UK if they are getting worse; elsewhere, your local emergency number.

Warm the bed before you get into it says that if you are 65 or over, have heart or lung disease or find it hard to move about, a blanket goes on top of heat, not instead of it: an NHS trust says to keep your home at least 18C (65F), and the US National Institute on Aging advises older adults to keep it at 68 to 70F. Two bodies, two numbers; take the warmer one if you are unsure. If the heat is off and you cannot keep the home that warm, Call before the shutoff date says a home that is dangerously cold, or a sick baby or older person in one, is a reason to leave for somewhere warm or call for help. Warm the bed before you get into it also says not to go below 16C (61F) in a room where a baby sleeps; the NHS puts a baby’s room at about 16 to 20C.

This answer does not cover frozen pipes in a cold house, warming up in a car, what to do when a prepayment meter has run out of credit, or how someone who relies on powered medical equipment gets through an outage; the only thing in these pages for the last is the shutoff-hold paragraph above. One person on the oven page says everyone needs a carbon monoxide alarm, gas appliances or not, because of a car in a garage. And if the heat works and the worry is next month’s bill, the answer to “How do I stay warm this winter without a huge bill?” is the one to read.