Apartment Emergency · Stay
Light without fire in a shared building.
When the power goes out, the instinct is to reach for candles. In an apartment building, that instinct puts every household in the building at risk. Here is the lighting toolkit that replaced candles years ago, costs less, lasts longer, and cannot burn the building down.
The fire risk
A candle in your apartment is a fire risk for the building.
According to the NFPA, candles cause approximately 7,200 home fires per year in the United States, resulting in roughly 80 civilian deaths and 800 injuries annually. Sleep is a factor in 21 percent of candle fire deaths. People light a candle during an outage, fall asleep, and the candle ignites nearby bedding, curtains, or papers.
In a detached house, a candle fire endangers one household. In an apartment building, it endangers dozens. Smoke, heat, and water damage from a single-unit fire can render an entire floor uninhabitable. Shared ventilation systems can carry smoke to floors that are nowhere near the fire. The 2022 Bronx apartment fire killed 17 people, including 8 children, from smoke inhalation alone. The fire itself was largely contained to a single unit.
The CPSC is direct: use flashlights or battery-operated candles instead of real candles during power outages. LED alternatives provide better light, last longer, and present zero fire risk. There is no practical reason to use an open flame for lighting in 2026.
A note about decorative candles: This guide is about emergency lighting, not atmosphere. If you enjoy candles for ambiance when the power is on, that is a personal choice. During an outage, when you are tired, distracted, and navigating in the dark, the fire risk increases sharply. Every candle fire death happened to someone who did not expect it to happen to them.
Sources: NFPA, "Home Candle Fires," nfpa.org. CPSC, "Winter Weather Safety Tips," cpsc.gov, January 2026.
The toolkit
Five lights cover every apartment need.
You do not need a drawer full of flashlights. You need the right light for each purpose: one for your hands, one for the room, one for the path to the bathroom, one for the building, and one for the children. Total cost: $40 to $80 for the complete set.
Headlamp
The single most useful emergency light. It sits on your head, freeing both hands to cook, carry things, open doors, hold a child, or navigate stairs. A good LED headlamp runs 20 or more hours on a set of AAA batteries and weighs almost nothing.
Keep it on your nightstand. When the power goes out at 2 AM, your headlamp should be the first thing your hand touches. It goes on your head and everything after that happens with light and with both hands free.
What to buy: Any name-brand LED headlamp with a low/medium/high mode and AAA batteries. $15 to $25. Rechargeable models work too, but keep spare AAA batteries as backup. Look for at least 100 lumens on medium and a red-light mode (preserves night vision and does not disturb a sleeping partner).
LED lantern
The headlamp lights where you look. The lantern lights the room. A single LED lantern set on a table or counter fills a room with enough light to read, eat, talk, or play cards. It creates a sense of normalcy that a flashlight beam does not.
One lantern per occupied room is ideal. A two-person apartment needs two. They run 40 to 100+ hours on batteries depending on brightness. A lantern on the lowest setting provides enough ambient light to move around safely and uses almost no battery.
What to buy: Collapsible LED camping lantern (D-cell or AA batteries) or USB-rechargeable lantern. $10 to $25. Avoid lanterns with only one brightness level; a dimmable lantern on low setting runs for days.
Motion-activated night light
The 2 AM trip to the bathroom in a pitch-black apartment is where people bump into furniture, step on things, and fall. A battery-powered motion-activated LED night light in the hallway and the bathroom solves this without anyone needing to find a flashlight or turn anything on.
These are small, adhesive-backed, battery-powered, and activate only when they detect motion. They use almost no battery because they are off most of the time. Place one in the hallway between the bedroom and bathroom, and one in the bathroom itself.
What to buy: Battery-powered stick-on motion sensor LED. $8 to $15 for a pack of two. AAA batteries. These are useful every day, not just during outages, for hallways, closets, and under-cabinet lighting.
Small handheld flashlight
For tasks that need directed light: checking the breaker panel, reading a label, looking under the sink, signaling from a window. A small, bright flashlight also serves as your building-navigation tool if you need to walk the stairwell or check on a neighbor.
This is your backup if the headlamp batteries die, your tool for focused tasks, and your light for leaving the apartment. Keep it by the door or in the ready bag.
What to buy: Any LED flashlight that runs on AA or AAA batteries. $8 to $15. Rechargeable is fine as a primary; keep a battery-powered backup. Avoid flashlights that require specialty batteries you will not have on hand.
Glow sticks (if children are present)
A power outage is scary for a child. A glow stick is not. Snap one, hand it to the child, and their room is no longer completely dark. Glow sticks last 8 to 12 hours, cannot start a fire, cannot break and cut anyone, and cost about $0.25 each in a bulk pack.
Keep a pack of 20 to 50 in a drawer. They are also useful for marking pathways, hanging in the bathroom, or leaving in a hallway as a low-level orientation light that requires no batteries at all.
What to buy: Bulk pack of 6-inch glow sticks. $5 to $10 for 25-50. Check the expiration date; they degrade over 3 to 5 years in storage. Replace the pack every 2 to 3 years.
Total cost for the complete lighting kit
Headlamp ($15-$25) + lantern ($10-$25) + motion lights ($8-$15) + flashlight ($8-$15) + glow sticks ($5-$10) = $46 to $90. Plus a 24-pack of AA batteries and a 12-pack of AAA batteries ($10-$15). The entire lighting solution for an apartment costs less than a good dinner out and lasts for years.
Placement
A light you cannot find in the dark is in the wrong place.
The power goes out. It is dark. Where is the flashlight? If the answer involves opening a drawer, rummaging through a junk box, or walking to another room, you have already failed the most basic test of emergency lighting: findability in total darkness.
Where to keep each light
- Headlamp: on the nightstand or hanging from the headboard. When the power drops at 2 AM, your hand reaches to the nightstand. The headlamp is the first tool you need and the one that enables finding everything else. Some people keep it looped over the bedpost. Either works. It must be reachable without standing up.
- Lantern: on a shelf in the hall closet or kitchen counter. Once you have the headlamp on, your first move is likely to the main living area. The lantern lights that room. If you keep it on a known shelf, you can retrieve it in seconds with your headlamp on.
- Motion lights: already installed and always active. These are not "emergency" lights you deploy during an outage. They are always there, always on standby, always motion-activated. Install them the day you buy them and forget about them until the power goes out, at which point they work automatically.
- Flashlight: in the ready bag by the door, or in the nightstand drawer. This is your "leave the apartment" light and your secondary if the headlamp fails. It goes wherever you would grab it on the way out the door.
- Glow sticks: in a kitchen or bathroom drawer. Not something you need to find instantly. Once you have the headlamp on, you can retrieve and activate glow sticks at your convenience.
Glow-in-the-dark tape: A 1-inch strip of phosphorescent tape on the headlamp strap, the flashlight body, or the lantern handle makes the light findable in total darkness without needing another light to find it. It charges from ambient room light during normal use and glows for hours. A roll costs $5 and lasts a lifetime. This is the kind of small detail that matters at 2 AM when nothing else is working.
Your phone
Your phone is not a flashlight.
Yes, your phone has a flashlight. But your phone is also your communication device, your news source, your emergency contact list, and your only connection to what is happening outside your building. Every minute you use it as a flashlight drains the battery that powers all of those more important functions.
The phone flashlight LED draws about 0.5 to 1 watt. That sounds small until you run it for three hours and discover you have drained 15 to 20 percent of your battery. During an outage of unknown duration, that 20 percent might be the difference between reaching someone and going dark.
Use your phone flashlight for the 30 seconds it takes to reach your headlamp. Then turn it off and keep it off. Dim the screen brightness to minimum. Turn off Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (if your router is down anyway), and background app refresh. Switch to Low Power Mode. Your phone should outlast the outage, not the other way around.
In the building
Navigating a dark building. Safely.
During a building-wide outage, the hallways and stairwells that you normally navigate without thinking become genuinely hazardous. Emergency lighting in common areas may or may not function, depending on the building's backup power and battery maintenance. Assume it will not work and bring your own light.
Stairwells
Use your flashlight or headlamp. Move slowly. Hold the handrail. Count the floors by feel or by the floor numbers painted on the stairwell walls (these are required by fire code and are present in nearly all commercial and multi-family buildings). If you are above the sixth floor, the stairwell may be the only way down during a fire or evacuation. Walk it at least once in daylight so you know the layout.
Hallways
Some buildings have battery-backed emergency lighting in hallways that activates automatically during a power failure. Many older buildings do not. If you need to leave your unit, take a flashlight. If you are checking on a neighbor, knock loudly and identify yourself before they open the door in the dark.
Elevators
Do not use elevators during a power outage. If power cycles or partially restores, the elevator may start and then stop between floors. If you are trapped in an elevator during an outage, use the emergency phone or alarm button. Most elevator emergency phones connect to a monitoring service or the building's front desk. Stay calm and wait for assistance. Modern elevators are required to have battery-backed emergency lighting inside the cab.
Making it last
Light discipline. Not every room needs light.
During an outage, light the room you are in. Turn off or dim the light in rooms you are not using. The lantern on its lowest setting provides enough ambient light to prevent accidents while using almost no battery. Save the bright settings for tasks that require them.
Runtime reference
Runtimes vary by manufacturer, battery freshness, and temperature. Cold weather reduces battery output. Store spare batteries at room temperature, not in the freezer.
A practical approach: use the headlamp on low for navigation and tasks. Use the lantern on low for ambient room light during meals and conversation. Switch to bright settings only when you need to read, cook, or inspect something. With this discipline, a single set of batteries can power your lighting for three to five days without difficulty.
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