Hours, not days, on the coldest nights, and the clock runs fastest on pipes in exterior walls and unheated crawlspaces. The local protocol exists because the sequence is so regular: open the cabinets under sinks on exterior walls so room air reaches the pipes, set faucets to a slow drip, keep interior doors open for circulation, and shut off and drain any zone you cannot keep warm if the outage stretches. Meanwhile the furnace call proceeds as the emergency it is: Englewood's dispatch culture, with firms answering no-heat calls around the clock since the 1950s, was built on exactly this night. Treat heat and water as one emergency and both usually survive it.
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