Emergency Electrical
An electrical emergency? Kill the power, then know who to call
Burning smells, sparking outlets, a breaker that will not stay in. Which of those can wait until morning, which one means leaving the house, and what an electrician charges at 2am.
24/7 dispatch network
Request a licensed contractor now
Fire, a gas smell, or an injury? Leave the building and call 911 first, then your gas utility or power company. Use this form once you are safe.
The stakes, in real numbers
Why the first ten minutes matter
Every figure is sourced
- 0
- home electrical fires a year in the US
- 0h
- window before mold can start after water damage
- 0+
- US deaths a year from consumer-product carbon monoxide
- $0
- damage from just one inch of flood water
Source: ESFI
Source: EPA
Source: CPSC
Source: NFIP
An electrical emergency is any fault that can start a fire or deliver a shock while you wait, and in the US the Electrical Safety Foundation International puts home electrical fires at roughly 51,000 a year, causing nearly 500 deaths and $1.3 billion in property damage.
That is why electrical triage runs differently to plumbing triage. Water damages things. Electricity kills people and burns houses down, and the interval between a warning sign and a fire can be very short.
What counts as an electrical emergency
What is considered an electrical emergency?
Burning smells or smoke from outlets, switches or the panel. Sparking, scorching or a hot receptacle. A breaker that will not stay reset. Buzzing or crackling at the panel. Any water in contact with live equipment. Those need someone tonight.
Everything else on the electrical side, a dead outlet, one flickering lamp, a dimmer that hums, is a normal weekday appointment. The dividing line is heat and arcing, because those are the two things that start fires.
- Smell or smoke. Burning plastic, a fishy or urine-like odour, or visible smoke from any electrical fitting. This is the fastest-moving category.
- Arcing and sparking. Large yellow or white sparks, sustained sparking, scorch marks, or an outlet that is warm to the touch.
- Protection refusing to hold. A breaker that trips immediately with nothing plugged in, or one that will not stay in at all.
- Water and power together. A leak above a panel, a flooded basement with live outlets, or a soaked appliance.
In this guide
Everything in the emergency-electrical guide
Circuit breaker keeps tripping
The four causes, the amp maths behind an overload, and the point at which you stop resetting.
Breaker will not reset at all
What a breaker that refuses to stay in is telling you, and why it is a different problem.
Burning electrical smell
The fastest-moving fault on this list. What to switch off, and when to leave the house.
Outlet sparking
The small blue spark that is normal, and the yellow one that means stop using it.
Flickering lights
One lamp, one room or the whole house. Each points somewhere different, including the utility.
Electrical panel buzzing
A faint hum can be normal. Buzzing, crackling or heat at the panel is not.
No power to one room
Dead outlets with nothing tripped. Where the hidden GFCI usually is.
What an emergency electrician costs
Service-call fees, hourly rates and the real after-hours multiplier, in plain numbers.
The first two minutes
How to kill power safely, and when not to
- 01
Check for fire or injury first
Flames, smoke, or anyone in contact with a live source means 911 before anything else. Do not touch a person who is being shocked until the power is off.
- 02
Get to a dry position
Dry floor, dry hands, dry shoes. Never reach a panel across standing water. If you cannot get there dry, call the power company to cut supply at the meter.
- 03
Kill the circuit, then the main
Switch off the individual breaker for the affected circuit. If you cannot identify it or the panel itself is the problem, switch off the main.
- 04
Isolate, label, call
Tape a note over the breaker so nobody resets it, photograph anything scorched, and call a licensed electrician with the circuit already dead.
The instruction every competitor gives is "turn off the main breaker if it is safe". None of them define safe, which is the only part that matters.
Safe means a dry floor, dry hands and dry footwear, with nothing conductive between you and the panel. If the basement is wet, or the panel is warm, wet or sparking, you do not open it. Your power company will cut supply at the meter on request, at no charge, and they do it routinely.
Water on an electrical fire, and touching a shock victim
Two mistakes account for most of the avoidable injuries in this category. Water conducts, so throwing it on an electrical fire routes current back to the person holding the bucket. And a person in contact with a live source is themselves live: switch the power off or knock them clear with something non-conductive, but do not grab them. If there is fire or an injury, call 911 before you do anything else.
Three numbers: 911, the power company, or an electrician
This is the routing question the search results ask constantly and answer badly. Three different organisations own three different parts of the problem.
- 911. Any fire or smoke, anyone shocked or unconscious, and any downed power line. Downed lines are treated as live regardless of appearance, and nothing is approached.
- Your power company. Everything on the supply side: the drop from the pole, the service head, the meter, and a whole-street outage. They will also cut supply at the meter if you cannot safely reach your panel.
- A licensed electrician. Everything from the panel inward. Tripping, arcing, buzzing, dead circuits, scorched outlets and anything inside a wall.
Getting this wrong costs the hour that matters. People call electricians about downed lines and utilities about tripping breakers, and both get told to call someone else.
What an emergency electrician costs
Indicative US ranges. Always get a written quote.
| Job | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Service-call fee | $100–$200 | Usually covers the first hour on site |
| Standard labor | $50–$130 / hr | Weekday business hours |
| Emergency / after-hours labor | $100–$250 / hr | Typically 1.5×–2× standard |
| Separate trip fee, where charged | $40–$100 | Sometimes a flat $150–$300 emergency fee instead |
| Typical after-hours call-out total | $150–$500 | Labor plus parts, straightforward fault |
| Night, weekend or holiday urgent call | $200–$800 | Top of the band, holidays included |
Two things separate an honest quote from a bad one. The service call and the hourly rate are separate numbers, and the after-hours multiplier applies to the hourly rate rather than to the whole job.
Ask for all three figures before dispatch: call-out fee, hourly rate right now, and whether there is a minimum. Full breakdown sits in our guide to what an emergency electrician charges.
Is it safe to sleep in the house tonight?
Can I sleep in the house with an electrical fault?
Usually yes if the affected circuit is isolated at the panel, nothing smells of burning, and your smoke alarms work. No if anything smells of hot plastic, if the panel is warm or buzzing, or if you were unable to isolate the fault.
The smoke alarm part is not a throwaway. ESFI reports that 65 percent of home fire deaths occur in homes with no working smoke detector, which makes a tested alarm the single highest-value thing in the house on a night like this.
Test them before bed. If the fault involved smell or heat, and you have no working alarm on that floor, treat the house as unsafe until an electrician has seen it.
Can I just leave that breaker off?
Yes, and it is often the right call. Isolating a faulty circuit at the panel is a legitimate holding action that lets a genuinely urgent fault wait for a daytime rate.
Two conditions apply. Label it, because a household member resetting an isolated fault is exactly how this goes wrong. And be sure the fault is downstream of the breaker: if the panel itself is buzzing or the smell is at the panel, isolating one circuit does nothing.
Where a burning electrical smell is involved, isolation is not enough on its own, because the source may already be smouldering inside a wall.
24/7 dispatch network
Get a licensed electrician moving on this
Tell us what has failed and your ZIP code. Licensed, insured electricians covering your area will contact you directly. Submitting costs nothing and there is no obligation to hire.
Fire, a gas smell, or an injury? Leave the building and call 911 first, then your gas utility or power company. Use this form once you are safe.
Know the line
Safe to check yourself, or call a pro now?
Safe to check yourself
- Switching a breaker off from a dry position
- Unplugging appliances on a suspect circuit
- Resetting a GFCI outlet with the test and reset buttons
- Checking whether neighbours have the same outage
- Testing smoke alarms and labelling an isolated breaker
Call a pro now
- Opening the panel cover, ever
- Replacing a breaker, an outlet or a switch
- Anything still sparking, buzzing, hot or smelling of burning
- A breaker that trips with nothing plugged in
- Any fault where water has reached live equipment
What an electrician will actually do when they arrive
Knowing the sequence makes the bill easier to read and the call easier to justify.
They start by making it safe rather than by fixing it. That usually means isolating the circuit, opening the panel to look for heat discolouration and loose terminations, and taking a load reading. Thermal imaging on the panel is common on arcing and buzzing calls.
Diagnosis then narrows the fault to a circuit, a device or a section of cable, usually by isolating and testing continuity. Only after that comes the repair, which is often a second visit if parts are needed. A good electrician quotes the make-safe and the repair separately.
What homeowners actually ask
What electricians report charging for emergency work
Drawn from real public forum threads and reported prices, summarised and attributed as patterns. These are not reviews of this site, and no names or ratings have been invented.
“$200 plus materials for the first hour on an emergency call, including a twenty-minute drive”
“$250 for a Saturday-morning service call to replace a breaker”
“About $90 an hour plus the cost of the breaker, roughly two hours for a main-breaker replacement”
“Breaker keeps tripping”
1 / 4
Making the next electrical emergency less likely
Three things move the odds materially, and none of them is expensive.
- Working smoke alarms on every floor. The single highest-value item in the house, given 65 percent of home fire deaths happen where none was working.
- GFCI and AFCI protection where code expects it. Kitchens, bathrooms, garages and outdoors for GFCI; bedrooms and living areas for AFCI. Arc-fault protection exists specifically for the 28,000 fires a year ESFI attributes to arcing.
- Load spread rather than stacked. Two heat-producing appliances on one 15 amp circuit is the most common overload in American homes, and an extension lead does not add capacity.
How the matching works, and what we do not do
Emergency Services 24H is a referral service. We do not employ electricians and we do not perform electrical work.
Your request routes by ZIP code to licensed, insured contractors covering your area, and they contact you directly to quote and schedule. The rates published here exist so you can judge that quote instead of accepting it blind.
Straight answers
Frequently asked questions
The questions homeowners actually search for on this problem, answered in plain language.
Browse all guidesWhat is considered an electrical emergency?
Anything that can start a fire or deliver a shock if left running: burning smells or smoke from outlets, switches or the panel, sparking or scorched receptacles, a breaker that will not stay reset, buzzing or crackling at the panel, and any water in contact with live equipment. ESFI counts roughly 51,000 home electrical fires a year in the US.
Who do I call for an electrical emergency?
Three different numbers cover three different faults. Fire, smoke or a shock injury is 911. Downed lines, damage to the service head or the meter, and a whole-street outage are your power company. Anything from the panel inward that is sparking, buzzing, tripping or burning is a licensed electrician.
How much does an emergency electrician cost?
Standard labor runs about $50 to $130 an hour with a service call of $100 to $200 that usually covers the first hour. After hours the rate moves to roughly $100 to $250 an hour, typically 1.5 to 2 times standard, and a night, weekend or holiday call-out commonly totals $200 to $800 including parts.
Is it safe to flip a tripped breaker back on?
Once, after unplugging everything on that circuit. If it holds, reintroduce devices one at a time to find the fault. If it trips again immediately, or will not stay in at all, stop. Repeated resetting of a breaker that is protecting a short circuit or a ground fault is how a fault becomes a fire.
Is it safe to sleep in the house with an electrical fault?
If you have isolated the affected circuit at the panel, there is no burning smell anywhere, and your smoke alarms work, usually yes. If anything smells of burning plastic, if the panel is warm or buzzing, or if you cannot isolate the fault, do not wait until morning. ESFI notes 65 percent of home fire deaths happen where no smoke alarm was working.
What should I never do in an electrical emergency?
Never put water on an electrical fire, never touch someone who is being shocked before the power is off, never reach a panel while standing on a wet floor, and never keep resetting a breaker that keeps tripping. Each of those turns a contained fault into an injury or a fire.
Sources for this page
- Electrical Safety Foundation International
- National Fire Protection Association: Home Fires Caused by Electrical Distribution and Lighting Equipment, 2014-2018 averages
- U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission: Carbon Monoxide Information Center
- U.S. Fire Administration (FEMA): Clothes dryer fire safety
- HomeGuide
- Angi
Checked . If a figure here no longer matches its source, that is a bug, so tell us and we will correct it.
24/7 dispatch network
Get help from a licensed local contractor
Tell us what has failed and where you are. We route your request to licensed, insured contractors covering your ZIP code, and they contact you directly.
Fire, a gas smell, or an injury? Leave the building and call 911 first, then your gas utility or power company. Use this form once you are safe.