Hurricane Sandy-electric co. says possible outages 4-7 or 10 days for some

[gkhouston]

3. Sometimes cable modems or cordless phones have batteries for backup power.

Unless your batteries were very fresh and you only used them sporadically, it wouldn't help you for a 4-8 day outage. (And that's assuming your computer has a charged battery, too.)

Has your basement flooded before? Would it be possible/useful to get the washer/dryer up on bricks, boards, or cement blocks??