Milo I'm so so sorry about your sister's friend
We lost cable around 8.30pm on Monday and power at 9.30pm. We got it back last night, so we were out for 48 hours. Still no cable. The winds were absolutely nuts. We only lost some siding in the awning over the porch, and the outside window of one of the windows of the big living room window (if that makes sense... it's a big window with a lot of little windows, and there are two layers of them). Somehow the neighbors lost an ornament from their back yard that was glued to something (they couldn't take it out by themselves), and it flew all around the bushes and fences to go smash on our front living room window.
We lost everything in the fridge, hubby says the freezer stuff is fine because it was covered in ice. Now I have to get a lot of groceries and find a gas station that actually still has gas (and power... I think 90% of the city lost power and only 50% was back last night).