One old fashioned safety check was that in the old days your landline telephone system was sustained by independent power from the telephone company. Don't know if this is true. We had a major earthquake several years ago and the phone system was up long enough for me to call my kinfolk.

There are folks more or less related to various terrorists who have an attack on the electrical infrastructure in mind. There have been some notable attacks and plans for attacks (60 Minutes in the U.S. has covered them) And of course there are external national threats for these as well. Problem is it's a target rich environment. It may be that the main offence from these is the ability to target the opponents as well.
I worked with a Kiwi (in US) back when Auckland had that major long term power outage. It was unbelievable.