I'm guessing he is thinking about the Feb 03 Ice Storm.
IIRC there were something like 300k residents of Mecklenburg County out of power for at least 3 days.
It was memorable to because at the time I was still servicing my home security accounts. We had about 1,500 accounts and did dealer work for one of the national players as well. We typically went through 30 batteries a week between new installs and service calls. We went through 2,100 in one month. People were crazy, the power was out, but they DEMANDED their security system stay on...even at the expense of $150 after hour service calls.
