After a Storm: What to Check at Home and When to Call

The wind dies down, the rain stops, and the house is quiet in the wrong way. Maybe the power is out. Maybe it is on but something smells off or a few lights are acting odd. Here is what a homeowner can safely look at after a storm, what to leave strictly alone, and who to call for what.

Safety first, before anything else

• Downed power lines: stay far away and keep everyone else away. Treat every wire on the ground as live, even if it looks dead, and call your utility and 911
• Standing water in a basement or around outlets and the panel: do not walk into it, and do not touch anything electrical until a professional says it is safe
• Sparks, a burning smell or smoke from a wall, outlet or panel: get everyone out of the house and call 911
• A tree or limb resting on the wires to your house: do not touch it and do not try to move it

That list comes before every other tip. A storm can leave a house with more hazards than it had the day before, and none of the other items here is worth a risk.

What you can check from a safe distance

Walk the outside of the house and look, without touching. The place power enters your house is worth a glance. You are looking for anything that does not look the way it did yesterday:

• The wires coming to the house from the pole: are they sagging, pulled tight or lying across anything?
• The pipe or mast where those wires attach at the roofline: is it bent, leaning or pulled away from the wall?
• The meter and the box it sits in: is it hanging loose, cracked or pulled away from the siding?
• Outdoor lights, outlets and fixtures: any that are cracked, full of water or scorched?
• Trees and limbs near the lines: anything that has come down, or that looks ready to?

If you see any of that, stay back and make a phone call. Do not try to pull a limb off a line or straighten a bent mast.

Who to call

The line between the pole and your house is generally the utility's concern, and the wiring from the meter inward is generally yours. When something is damaged where those two meet, such as a pulled-away mast or a damaged meter base, the utility often has to be involved before an electrician can make repairs, so call both. If the power is out, a quick look at whether the neighbors are dark too tells you whether the problem is area-wide. If every house on the street has power but yours does not, that points to something on your side, and it is time for an electrician.

For damage inside the house, such as outlets that do not work, lights that flicker, a smell near equipment, or appliances that stopped working after a surge, call a licensed electrician. Please do not open the panel yourself or poke around in wet equipment. After a storm, an outlet or panel that looks fine can still be damaged inside.

A word about surges

Storms and utility switching can send power surges through a house. Sometimes the damage is plain, a dead appliance or an outlet that no longer works. Sometimes it is quiet, like electronics that fail weeks later. Surge protectors are one of the residential services we install, and it is worth asking about protection at the panel and at sensitive equipment, since the protector is aimed at the equipment behind it.

Generators and auxiliary power

If outages are a regular thing where you live, a generator or other auxiliary power is worth a conversation. If you already have a portable generator, two things matter: run it outdoors and well away from the house, windows and doors, because the exhaust is dangerous, and never connect it to the house by plugging it into an outlet. That can send power back out to the lines and endanger the crews working to restore service. A transfer switch, installed by a licensed electrician, is the proper way to power parts of a house from a generator. L & M Electric handles generators and auxiliary power for residential customers.

Calling L & M Electric after a storm

Emergency storm repair is part of our residential work. During business hours, Monday to Friday, 7:00 am to 4:00 pm, call us directly. If you need us after hours, our phone system will direct you to one of our service professionals. When you call, tell us what you saw and what you did not touch. A clear description over the phone helps us understand what we are walking into.

L & M Electric has served homeowners in Elkhart, St. Joseph, Kosciusko, LaGrange, Marshall and Noble counties for over four decades. Call us in Goshen at 574-533-4633. The residential page lists what we do for homes, from emergency repairs to rewiring, and the generators page covers backup power.