For academic scientists, it's not always up to us. Just going out and renting a generator and hooking that up to our instrumentation ourselves may be technically possible (plus or minus various building code and safety issues), but by that time the damage is probably already done, so backup power really needs to be formally installed. We can beg the facilities and maintenance dept to install proper backup power, but unless we managed to get that written into our startup budget at the time of hiring, the money is probably not going to appear.
Then you should not do it. It is a calculated risk and you have not be able to afford it, not doing it or accept the consequence. Frankly cannot have 99.9999 power in any case. Too expensive in the power company side. Average and the special issue.
They don't need 99.9999% power uptime, it is common to have UPS backups for critical equipment to cover brownouts and even day-long outages. This has been going on for 3 days and might last 5. That's not even 90% / one-nine uptime on a monthly basis.
>you have [to] be able to afford it, not [do] it or accept the consequence
What 4th option are you criticising? Unless you're saying that if they don't immediately throw up their hands, try to do nothing, and go home when the power goes out, they're not "accepting the consequences"?
