As an anecdote, I worked at a telco that is the only connectivity for around 50k people spread over a vast area. We had a massive power outage at the CO, and the backup generator failed. Everything, Even 911 was down (a VERY big deal) for basically everyone for most of a day. They stationed police and ambulances in the bigger cities and towns so people could directly ask for help.

With all hands on deck scrambling HARD, a week later we still didn’t have everything back up, because we didn’t know how. A ton of it had never been down since the 60s.

A mess indeed.