“There are lives at stake,” said Jack Brouwer, an engineering professor and director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. “I can’t over emphasis the calamity that these events cause at the neighborhood level. Hundreds of health care facilities don’t have back-up generators,” he said. “If you’re out of power for an hour, that’s fine, but for a couple of days — those lives count as much as those that would be lost in a fire.” The blackouts could also seriously hamper local response efforts for fire emergencies, Brouwer added.