Is HR trying to scare me?

I’ve worked for this company for 6 years and I’ve been remote for a little over 2 years now. A wind storm came through my area and knocked the power out for 24 hours and I had no way to work. HR told me I have to use vacation time because sick leave can only be used for illness and not “acts of god” that prevents me from working.

I quickly came to terms with losing 8 hours of my vacation time and just asked HR over teams if they could send me the policy or tell me where to find it for my future reference. I got no response until an email from the head of HR came through CC’ing my boss and my boss’s boss… all I wanted was to be able to reference the policy… I wasn’t even trying to fight the ruling… is HR trying to intimidate me into compliance?

Edit: ya just for clarification on my end, I’ve haven’t run into a situation that has prevented me from getting my hours in assistance from illness and it’s been some time sense I’ve read the policy. This is my only office job I’ve had so I haven’t really run into policies like this before. Now I know that if a hurricane or earthquake hits my area, I’m sick ??‍♂️ lesson learned.

Also short update… my boss’s boss is now fighting with HR over this… this is not what I asked for… ?‍♂️

Edit 2: just trying to disperse some confusion; I’m not upset about how the time off was handled, it’s in line with the policy (that I have now seen). The issue I had is that HR CC’ed my boss and my boss’s boss in their reply when they could have just linked me the employee handbook PDF over teams. I’m confused as to why this was ever escalated in the first place.

For those who keep saying “should have gone to a library or just have gone to the office.” I live 1000+ miles away from the closest US based office and a 5 hour drive + boarder crossing from the closest non-US office. A 10 hour round trip for an 8 hour work day is unreasonable. I work with a lot of sensitive personal and corporate data in my companies legal department and I am not allowed to conduct my work in public spaces because of that, so library/cafe/etc is not an option unless I want to violate my contract and be held liable. Not to mention the power outage effected roughly 60% of the population where I live so finding a spot might have been difficult to begin with. Stop focusing on this, it’s not what my post was asking about.