Some neighbors were discussing emergency heating measures and someone mentioned kerosene which reminded me of the band Cracker-

From Wikipedia:

Kerosene Hat is Cracker’s second album, released on August 24, 1993. It reached #1 on Billboard’s Top Heatseekerschart, and #59 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The well-known hit single from this album, “Low”, helped Cracker gain widespread notice.
According to frontman David Lowery, the album’s title comes from the band’s early days in Richmond, Virginia. Lowery lived with Cracker guitarist Johnny Hickman in an old dilapidated house whose only source of heat came from two kerosene heaters. To buy more kerosene meant a cold walk to a nearby gas station, so before he left the house, Lowery would bundle up and put on an old wool hunting cap – hence the “kerosene hat”. “To this day,” says Lowery, “the smell of kerosene reminds me of the poverty and the wistful hope we had for our music.”[2]

As I have mentioned before, David Lowery lived at 239 S. Laurel Street.

As for heating without electric heat pumps, many Hill houses still rely on City natural gas for heating. Many have old fashioned and new fashioned wood stoves. There are also wood pellet stoves.

I keep hoping we will eventually see affordable, efficient, residential hydrogen fuel cells that can easily create electricity with natural gas and store it and solar power for emergency situations.