When hurricane Fran went over Raleigh we were without power for 10 days. The community that we lived in did not wait for the city, state, or feds to come in and clean our streets. We got together and made it happen by ourselves. It went over on a Thursday (I think) and we were able to get out of our driveway and out of our community to go to work on Monday.
The lack of power we dealt with in each our own way. The damage to our homes we mitigated by working together until the insurance company could come out and review. I think that if we had the equipment / knowledge we would have repaired our own power lines.
We had such a response that city and state leaders came to the community and asked how we did it.
DIB - tell me how many tarps you need and I will go to HD or Lowes and send them to you.