When a storm takes your service wires down

A limb comes down in the night and takes wires with it. It is one of the more alarming things that can happen to a house, and it is also one of the situations where what you do in the first ten minutes matters more than usual.

First, treat every downed wire as live

There is no safe way to assess a downed conductor by looking at it. It does not have to be arcing, sparking, humming or moving to be dangerous, and the absence of drama tells you nothing at all.

Keep people and animals well clear. Do not move the limb. Do not attempt to move the wire, including with something wooden, which is advice that circulates and is not reliable when the wood is wet. If wires are down across a driveway or a road, that is an emergency services call before it is anything else.

Why several organisations are suddenly involved

This is the part that surprises people. Most electrical work involves you and an electrician. Storm damage to incoming service involves the utility company, often the city, and an electrical contractor, and the sequence matters.

Exactly where responsibility divides between the utility and the property owner varies by utility and by situation, and it is not something to take from a website, including this one. What is consistent is that some of the equipment involved is not the property owner's to touch, and work has to be coordinated rather than simply scheduled.

That coordination is a normal part of this work. CC Electric deals directly with city officials and with the utility company on service and meter damage, because on that kind of job nobody gets to proceed alone.

What an electrician can do on the day

Quite a lot, and it is worth knowing what to expect so the visit is useful.

• Make the situation safe on the property side and isolate what can be isolated
• Assess damage to the meter enclosure, the service entrance and the panel
• Establish what has to be repaired or replaced before power can be restored
• Coordinate with the utility and the city on what happens in what order
• Carry out the repairs that are the contractor's to carry out, and get them inspected

What no contractor can do is skip the coordination. If the answer on the day is that something has to happen with the utility before the rest can proceed, that is the answer, and an electrician telling you otherwise is not doing you a favour.

Damage that is not obvious

A storm event can leave problems that are not visible from the yard. Water finding its way into an enclosure, a connection pulled but not parted, or damage inside a panel that shows up as intermittent faults weeks later.

That is worth mentioning if you get power back and something still is not right. Breakers behaving differently than they used to, or lights flickering on circuits that were fine before, are reasonable things to have looked at after a storm even if the immediate emergency has passed.

The same goes for anything that was running when the power went. Surges and abrupt losses are hard on motors and on electronics, and a well pump or an air handler that sounds different afterwards is worth a look rather than a hopeful few weeks.

The inspection is not a formality here

Service work generally has to be signed off, and permits and inspections are handled in house so you are not the one chasing them while also dealing with everything else a storm has left you.

There is a practical reason to want that sign-off beyond compliance. After storm damage, an independent confirmation that the repair was done to code is a genuinely useful thing to have on record, both for your own peace of mind and for anything you may have to demonstrate later.

Out of hours

Storms do not observe office hours, which is why CC Electric runs a 24/7 emergency line alongside the office hours of Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM.

If wires are down at your property, make the area safe, keep everyone away from it, and call. The assessment is the fastest way to find out what the actual situation is, and it is considerably better than standing in the yard trying to work it out from a distance.