Natural Disasters vs. Landlord

[Jess Wheeler]

I previously lived in a house up in the hills of California. Within my first week at the new house, we had a rolling black out for 3 days in a row, losing power, running water, cell reception (up in the hills, needed WiFi to make a phone call), and ultimately made me throw out all my groceries upon moving into the house. These rolling blackouts happened at least 4 times in the < 2 months living in the house. As a recent college grad, this was my first house, and my landlord never once reached out to see if we were okay. A house without power, running water, or cell reception is unlivable, and it happened multiple times which was extremely costly for me as well as just super inconvenient. We were not made aware of these rolling blackouts prior to moving in. Now, its 3 months later and my landlord will still not return the security deposit back to me. Help! Is there any compensation involved from these consecutive power outages that our landlord did not warn us about? We were never prepared...