Outage Food Safety Triage

Provides FDA/USDA-based guidance to safely triage fridge and freezer food after a power outage, detailing keep/toss rules and refreezing safety.

Overview

Power just came back. The fridge has been dark for 9 hours, the freezer for 9 hours too. Standing in front of it, everyone faces the same costly dilemma: toss everything (~$300 of food) or gamble (and risk the food-poisoning cluster that ERs see after every hurricane). The official rules are simple but almost nobody knows their specifics — and the category-level calls are where the money and the safety live.

This skill is a triage instrument built on FDA/USDA guidance:

1. Duration verdicts — fridge held ≤4 h at ≤40°F (fine), 4–8 h in the danger zone (partial cull), freezer: 24 h half-full / 48 h full (still safe if intact crystals).
2. Item-by-item disposition — the keep/toss table people guess wrong: open mayonnaise survives, deli meat and leftovers do not; hard cheese survives, shredded does not; butter yes, soft cheese no.
3. The 40°F / 4°C danger-zone math — why "but it still felt cold" is not evidence, and what a thermometer check actually validates.
4. Refreezing rules — when thawed-then-refrozen is safe and when it's a silent hazard.
5. Door-sign protocol — the prepared-household trick that makes the next outage a 2-minute decision.

When to Use

• Power outage just ended (or ongoing) and food sat in a closed fridge/ freezer without power
• Fridge accidentally unplugged / door left open overnight / thermostat failure discovered late
• After a storm, rolling blackout, or freezer failure discovered on return from vacation
• Planning: printing the door sign + thermometer placement before storm season

Don't use for: flood-contaminated food (different protocol — assume total loss of contact-flooded items), long multi-week outages with generator fuel questions, or commercial food service (health-code rules apply).

Quick Start

bash

python3 scripts/triage.py verdict --hours 9 --fridge-temp unknown
python3 scripts/triage.py verdict --hours 5 --fridge-temp 41
python3 scripts/triage.py item --name "deli turkey, opened"
python3 scripts/triage.py item --name "open mayonnaise"
python3 scripts/triage.py refreeze --state "thawed, still cold, crystals"
python3 scripts/triage.py doorsign --out door-sign.md

Stdlib-only, no network.

The Rules Being Applied

Fact	Number	Consequence
Fridge safe window (closed, unpowered)	4 hours at ≤40°F/4°C	After that, perishables enter the danger zone
Danger zone	40–140°F (4–60°C)	Bacteria double every 20 min in this band
Freezer, half full, closed	24 hours	Food safe if still ≤40°F / has ice crystals
Freezer, full, closed	48 hours	Full freezers hold mass-cold far longer
Never taste-test	—	Appearance and smell detect NOTHING about toxin presence
Refreeze rule	thawed but ≤40°F and crystals intact	Safe; quality drops, safety holds
Frozen-thawed-frozen fish/meat >40°F	toss	Toxins survive re-freezing; cold doesn't undo them

Why "felt cold" is not evidence: fridge interiors stratify — the door shelves hit 50°F in 2 hours while the back-bottom stays cold for 6. Only a thermometer reading (appliance thermometer kept IN the fridge) counts as data; everything else is inference from duration.

Workflow

1. Establish duration: hours without power (or hours fridge discovered warm). If unsure, use the longest plausible estimate — never the shortest.
2. verdict --hours H --fridge-temp T → zone verdict for fridge and freezer sections (fridge-temp can be a number in °F or unknown).
3. Walk the fridge with the item engine: item --name "..." for each borderline thing. The output cites the category rule, not vibes.
4. Freezer check: still-frozen hard? ice crystals present? → refreeze path via refreeze --state. Thawed and >40°F → the toss list.
5. Bag culled items immediately — out of the house, not "later", so nobody salvages from the bin.
6. Print the door sign (doorsign) — thermometer placement + the 4h/24h/48h numbers + the top-10 toss-first items. Tape it inside the door; the next outage becomes a 2-minute call.

Common Pitfalls

1. Tasting or smelling to check. Listeria, Staph aureus and B. cereus toxins are invisible and odorless at dangerous doses. Tasting is the #1 outage food-poisoning mechanism.
2. Averaging the duration. "Power was out maybe 5, maybe 10 hours" → use 10. The math must be worst-case, not hopeful.
3. Trusting door-shelf items. Door shelves are the warmest zone; condiments survive there, milk does not — even within a "passing" 4-hour verdict, treat door-zone perishables as 1 hour worse.
4. Refreezing fully thawed meat "because it's still cold." Cold is necessary, not sufficient: if it spent >2h above 40°F, toxins may already be present and survive the refreeze.
5. Forgetting the freezer's borrowed cold. A full freezer is a cold battery. Half-empty freezers lose 24h of runway — which is why the doorsign says to keep jugs of water frozen in the gaps.
6. Cooking as rescue. Cooking kills bacteria; it does NOT destroy preformed toxins (Staph, B. cereus). Cook-to-save only applies to items already on the safe side of the line.
7. Re-powering and "watching" the fridge. After triage, discard first, sanitize spills, then restock — a leaky thawed-chicken package contaminates the survivors.

Verification Checklist

• Duration estimated worst-case (longest plausible hours)
• Fridge verdict computed with thermometer reading if available
• Every borderline item run through the item engine, not eyeballed
• Freezer decided by ice-crystal state + temp, not by "mostly frozen"
• Refreeze decisions follow the 40°F+crystals rule
• Culls bagged and out of the house; spills sanitized before restock
• Door sign printed and taped inside the fridge for next time

Safety Disclaimer

When in doubt, throw it out — food poisoning costs more than groceries. This skill encodes FDA/USDA consumer guidance for planning; it cannot see your actual food. High-risk households (pregnant, elderly, immunocompromised, infants) should apply stricter cutoffs: any perishable with ≥2h of uncertainty goes.