What to do if you lose power

Check your circuit breaker panel. If a breaker has tripped, the outage is local to your home and you have somewhere to start.

If the breakers are intact, it may indicate a larger issue outside your home. Check whether neighbours have power — it is the fastest way to tell a grid outage from a service problem at your property.

Report the outage to your utility with your address and any detail you have: a bang, a flash, a pole down, a smell.

That detail matters. It moves you up the triage list and it tells the crew what they are coming to.

Flickering lights, breakers that trip repeatedly, buzzing from outlets, a burnt smell, or outlets that are hot to the touch.

These point to overloaded circuits or faulty wiring, and they need prompt professional assessment. They are the early stage of an electrical fire, not a quirk of the house.

Electrical faults do not stabilise. A loose connection arcs, the arcing carbonises the surrounding material, and the fault gets worse every time the circuit is loaded.

Same-day emergency service exists for exactly this window — the point where it is still a repair rather than a rebuild.

A backup generator keeps critical appliances running. Surge protection at the panel protects your electronics from the spike when power returns, which is when a surprising amount of equipment actually dies.

Keep an emergency kit, and schedule regular electrical maintenance. Most outage-related damage we see was preventable for a fraction of the repair.