Heating
Regardless of where you live, having a way to keep yourself and your family warm is critical during a crisis. There are a few areas in the United States that rarely go below 30 or 40 degrees in the coldest part of the year, but even those balmy areas have had their records broken with 15 degree lows and several inches of unexpected snowfall. In fact, the winter of late 2010 to early 2011 brought many weather surprises to most of the continental United States. Record snowfalls, ice storms, record low temperatures, blizzards and more swathed the country. And with that weather came power outages because of utility lines being down, rolling blackouts in Texas because there wasn't enough power to handle the demand, and even natural gas and water outages in southern Arizona because of pumps freezing in the cold.
The lesson is this: Always have sources of heat, no matter where you live.
If you can't have a source of heat, the extra clothing we talked about earlier will at least help. Heat is extremely important though and if there is any way for you to do so, you should put something aside in this area to help if an emergency arises.
Like cooking, the type of emergency heat source you have depends a lot on where you live but there are fewer options. If you have a fireplace, simply stock up on enough extra wood. If your furnace runs on electricity but your stove uses natural gas, you can use the stove carefully if the electricity goes out. Likewise if your stove runs on gas and the gas is out but the electricity isn't, you can use electric space heaters.
If your home is all electric then you are more vulnerable to utility outages. One way to prepare for an emergency in this case is to purchase camping heaters that run on small bottles of propane, and keep enough propane on hand to last for several days.