Around the time electric refrigeration of food became the norm, and when electric power became necessary to operate the blowers and ignition subassemblies of our home heating systems.
You'd think there's be some prioritization to restoring power to as many gas stations an other critical supply nodes first, particularly given the number of portable generators in use, but the officials seem to be concerned more about the numbers game in the restoration effort rather than exactly what is being restored. There's a certain political imperative to that, but it's a mistake to succumb to it, because the extended lack of infrastructure is going to cause more problems than an extended lack of household power.
There is--hospitals, fire/police, then other important infrastructure.
But make no mistake, you hit it on the head when you also said it's a numbers game. CMI (Customer Minutes Interrupted) is a huge deal to utilities, to the point some are going to CSI (Customer SECONDS Interrupted) and basing their rate cases on keeping those numbers as low as practical.
And continuity of electric power (and the quality of same) has really become an issue in the last 20 years or so with the implementation of microprocessor systems or industrial processes which require "5-9's" reliability (translated, 99.99999% power availability, or less than 30 seconds interruption in a YEAR) and very low harmonic distortion (compare US supplies of <5-7% THD to some European countries which are >30% THD--TVDOC will back me up on that one, wherever he might be...)
