Fort Lauderdale Emergency Electrician

Something has already gone wrong if you are reading this. The house is dark and the neighbors have lights. There is a hot plastic smell near the panel. A breaker keeps snapping off the moment you push it back. The dock pedestal is tripping with a boat plugged in, or water came up over the seawall and reached the meter. This page is for those situations in Fort Lauderdale, and it is written by the people who take those calls. Reach a Fort Lauderdale emergency electrician at (954) 602-0050. We answer around the clock and dispatch the closest available electrician. If there is open flame or heavy smoke, hang up on us and call 911 first.

Read This First: Four Situations Where You Leave Now

Most electrical problems can wait for an electrician to arrive. A few cannot, and the difference is worth knowing before you go looking for a flashlight.

• Smoke or fire from a panel, outlet, or wall. Get everyone out, close the door behind you, and call 911 from outside. Do not open the panel to see what is happening in there.
• A tingling or shocking sensation in the water at a dock, pool, or seawall. Get out of the water immediately, moving away from the dock rather than toward it, and shut off power to the dock if the disconnect is reachable on dry ground. Nobody goes back in until the source is found.
• A service drop or any wire lying on the ground, on a roof, on a fence, or in standing water. Treat it as energized. Stay well clear and keep others clear until the utility has confirmed it is dead.
• Water rising toward the panel or the meter while the power is still on. If the main breaker is dry and you can reach it without standing in water, shut it off. If it is not, leave the area and let it be shut off from outside.

Everything else on this page assumes you are safe and trying to figure out what to do next.

What the April 2023 Flood Taught This City About Panels

On April 12 and 13, 2023, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport recorded 25.91 inches of rain, the most ever measured here in a single day, with rates of three to four inches an hour at the peak. Edgewood in the southwest of the city saw close to three feet of water inside homes, downtown streets carried one to two feet, and more than 22,000 customers lost power across the region. We were in flooded garages and utility rooms for weeks afterward.

What that event settled for anyone who works in this city is that a flooded panel is not a dry it out and turn it back on situation. Breakers are sealed mechanical devices with springs, contacts and a thermal element inside. Once floodwater, which in Fort Lauderdale is usually brackish and carries whatever was on the street, gets into a breaker, the contacts corrode and the trip mechanism can seize. A breaker that has been submerged may hold current fine and then fail to open when it matters. Receptacles, switches and the wiring inside wet walls carry the same problem in a smaller package.

The right sequence after water reaches electrical equipment is to keep the power off, have the meter pulled or the service disconnected if the panel itself went under, and replace what was submerged rather than testing it back into service. Insurance adjusters know this, and a written finding from an electrician who has opened the equipment is what most of them want to see. If your street was one of the ones underwater in 2023 and nobody looked inside the panel afterward, it is worth having that done even now.

The Lights Are Out: Is It FPL or Is It Your House?

The first question we ask on the phone is whether the neighbors have power. That single answer decides who you should be calling.

If the whole street or the whole block is dark, the problem is on the utility side, and an electrician cannot fix it. Report it to FPL through their outage map or app, then wait it out or run your generator. Calling us to stand in your driveway while the grid is down does not help you.

If your house is dark and the houses on either side are lit, the fault is somewhere between the utility transformer and your panel, and there are several possibilities. A blown fuse or open connection at the transformer or on the service drop serving only your house is still an FPL problem, and you can often tell because the meter display will be blank. A failed main breaker, a burned service entrance conductor, a corroded meter socket, or a fault inside the panel is your problem, and that is where we come in. A partial outage, where some rooms work and others do not, or where lights are dim in one part of the house and unusually bright in another, points to a lost neutral or a lost leg of the 240 volt service. That last one can destroy appliances and it needs attention tonight, not tomorrow.

Ownership matters here. In FPL territory the utility owns the service drop and the meter itself. The weatherhead, the riser, the service entrance conductors and the meter enclosure belong to the homeowner. When a storm pulls the mast off a roof or salt has eaten through the meter can, FPL will not reconnect until that equipment is repaired, which means the order of operations is: we repair, the city inspects, FPL reconnects. We handle all three steps and we tell you the real sequence when you call rather than pretending the utility answers to us.

Burning Smells, Warm Cover Plates, and the Sound a Panel Should Not Make

A fishy or acrid smell that seems to come from nowhere is very often overheated plastic on a device or a conductor insulation beginning to break down. In older Fort Lauderdale housing, the usual sources are a receptacle that has been back-stabbed and is losing contact pressure, a switch feeding a heavy load through a worn contact, an aluminum branch circuit termination from the late 1960s and early 1970s that has crept loose, or a lug in the panel that was never torqued properly and has been heating and cooling for twenty years.

If you can trace the smell to a single outlet or switch, turn off the breaker for that circuit, leave the device alone, and call. If a cover plate is warm to the touch or discolored, the same applies. Do not plug anything else into it to test it.

A panel that buzzes, hums, crackles or ticks is telling you about an arc. Arcing at a breaker stab or a bus bar produces exactly that sound, and it also produces heat that you will sometimes feel through the dead front. Zinsco and Federal Pacific Stab-Lok equipment, both still present in plenty of Coral Ridge, Poinsettia Heights and Lauderdale Isles houses, are known for bus and breaker connections that arc and for breakers that will not trip on a fault. If your panel is one of those and it is making noise, shut off the main if you can do so without touching anything else, and treat it as an emergency call. If the main itself is hot or the noise is coming from the main breaker area, leave it and let us handle it at the meter.

A Breaker That Trips and Will Not Reset

Breakers trip for three reasons: overload, short circuit, or ground fault. Understanding which one you have tells you whether this is an inconvenience or a hazard.

An overload is too much load on one circuit. A space heater and a hair dryer on the same bedroom circuit is the classic case, and a breaker that resets and holds once you unplug something has done its job. That is not an emergency. Call us during the day if it keeps happening, because a circuit that is chronically overloaded is a circuit that is chronically hot.

A short circuit or a ground fault trips the breaker instantly, often with a sharp snap, and the breaker will not hold at all no matter what is unplugged. That means a conductor is touching something it should not touch, whether a nail through a cable, a chewed wire in an attic, a failed appliance, water inside a box, or a damaged underground run to a dock or a pool. Do not keep resetting it. Each reset pushes fault current through the same damaged spot and the breaker's ability to clear the fault degrades with every operation. Leave it off and call.

Ground fault and arc fault breakers add a fourth case. A GFCI breaker or receptacle that trips repeatedly on a dock, a pool, or an outdoor kitchen circuit is usually reporting real leakage current, and on the waterfront that leakage is what puts current into the water. It is not a nuisance to be bypassed. An AFCI breaker in a bedroom that trips at odd hours is often reacting to a loose connection or a shared neutral and it deserves a proper investigation rather than a swap for a standard breaker.

Dock, Lift and Shore Power Failures After Dark

Fort Lauderdale has roughly 165 miles of waterways, and a large share of the after-hours calls we take here start on a dock. The city's Las Olas Isles, Seven Isles, Rio Vista, Harbor Beach, Coral Ridge and Lauderdale Isles neighborhoods have private docks behind a great many houses, and the marine yards along the New River and on Marina Mile, the boatyard stretch of State Road 84, run shore power to vessels around the clock.

The emergency that matters most is current in the water. Electric shock drowning happens when a fault energizes the water around a dock and a swimmer's muscles lock up. The warning signs are a tingle felt in the water, a boat's ground fault protection tripping repeatedly, corroded underwater metal that looks like it is dissolving, or a dock light that flickers when a boat is plugged in. If anyone reports a tingle, everyone gets out and the dock gets shut off. We then test for leakage at the pedestal, at each boat, and at the bonding system, because the source can be on the dock, on a neighboring dock, or aboard a vessel.

The other common calls are a boatlift that stops mid-cycle with a hull in the air, which is usually a contactor failure, a blown motor fuse, a limit switch, or voltage drop on a long undersized run to the end of the dock, and a shore power pedestal that has burned at the receptacle. A melted 30 amp twist lock is a sign of a loose or corroded connection that has been heating under load, and the pedestal should stay off until it is replaced. We also get calls when king tides put a low mounted junction box under water and the dock circuit trips every evening at high tide. That is a box below the electrical datum plane and it needs to be raised, not dried out and reused.

Hurricane Season: Before the Storm, During, and the Morning After

Storm work in Fort Lauderdale runs in three phases, and the emergency calls come in the second and third.

Before. If a storm is coming and you have a standby generator, make sure it has run its weekly exercise cycle and that the transfer switch has operated. If you have a portable generator, know now where it will sit, which is outdoors, away from windows, never in a garage. Fill up on fuel, and if you are on the barrier island or one of the isles, think about whether the panel and the meter are above the level water reached in April 2023 or during the last king tide.

During. If water is coming into the house and rising, shut the main breaker off while the panel is still dry and while you can reach it without standing in water. If the power flickers on and off repeatedly, that is the grid faulting and reclosing, and it is hard on compressors and electronics. Turning off the air conditioning at the thermostat and unplugging what you can protects equipment. Do not go outside to look at the service drop in the wind.

After. The morning after is when we are busiest. Service masts bent or torn off roofs by falling limbs. Weatherheads pulled loose so the conductors are hanging by the drip loop. Meter cans full of water. Trees on drops. Panels that were submerged. And, every single storm, a house where somebody has run a portable generator into a dryer receptacle with a homemade double male cord. That backfeeds the transformer and puts lethal voltage on a line the FPL crew believes is dead. It kills linemen and it kills neighbors. If you are using a portable generator without an inlet and an interlock, run cords directly to the appliances and nothing else. Once the storm has passed we can install a proper inlet for next time, which is generator installation work done in calmer weather.

Older Downtown Buildings, Historic Houses and the Towers on the Beach

Fort Lauderdale's emergencies are shaped by its building stock, and there are three kinds here that behave very differently when something fails.

In Sailboat Bend, Victoria Park, Colee Hammock and the older blocks of Rio Vista, houses from the 1920s through the 1950s still carry some of their original wiring. When a circuit fails in one of those houses, the failure is often at a junction nobody knew existed, buried above a ceiling or inside a wall after a remodel decades ago. Cloth insulation that has gone brittle crumbles when a conductor is moved, and a lighting circuit that suddenly dies may have opened at a splice in the attic. The safe overnight move is to leave that circuit off and let us find the break in daylight if nothing is hot or smelling. If there is any smell at all, it is a tonight problem.

Downtown and in Flagler Village, the older commercial buildings along Himmarshee Street and the storefronts on Las Olas Boulevard run restaurants, bars and studios on services and panels that were not designed for them. A lost phase on a three-phase service, where one leg of the supply drops out, is one of the ugliest commercial failures we see: single phase loads on the surviving legs keep working, three-phase motors on compressors and hood fans hum and overheat, and the staff cannot understand why half the kitchen is fine and the walk-in is dying. If a commercial space loses part of its power, shut down the motors first and call. Our emergency electrical repairs service covers commercial spaces the same way it covers homes.

On the Galt Ocean Mile, on the beach, and in the residential towers along the New River, a unit owner's emergency is often the building's emergency. If the outlets in your unit are dead, check whether the corridor lights and the elevators are working. If they are not, it is a building service or riser issue and the association's management company needs to call, not you. If only your unit is affected, the fault is at your unit panel or the meter room feeder, and we can work with management to get into the room. Salt air on an oceanfront building corrodes meter stacks and bus connections in ways that show up as one unit losing power while the rest of the floor is fine.

What To Do Before We Arrive

You can make the visit shorter and safer with a few steps, none of which require touching anything inside the panel.

• Note exactly what happened and when. Did the power go out all at once or flicker first? Was an appliance starting? Was it raining? Did you hear a bang? That history is half the diagnosis.
• Check whether the neighbors have power, and look at the meter. A blank meter display with lit houses nearby is a strong sign of a utility side problem on your drop.
• If a breaker has tripped, leave it tripped. If you have already reset it once and it tripped again, do not try a third time.
• If there is a burning smell you can localize, turn off that one circuit at the panel if you can do so safely. If the smell is coming from the panel itself, leave the panel alone and shut off the main only if it is cool and dry and you can operate it without reaching past anything.
• Unplug sensitive electronics and turn off the air conditioning if the power is coming and going, or if lights are dimming and brightening in different rooms.
• Clear a path to the panel, the meter, and if relevant the dock. Move the car out of the way if the meter is in the garage. Put pets somewhere secure.
• Have a flashlight, not candles. Open flame in a house that smells like burning insulation is a bad combination.

Do not remove the panel cover, do not tape a breaker in the on position, and do not run an extension cord from a neighbor's house through a window. All three of those turn a repair call into a rescue.

What an Overnight Call Actually Looks Like

When you call (954) 602-0050 after hours, a person answers, not a recording. We will ask you what is happening, whether anyone is in danger, whether the neighbors have power, and where the panel and meter are. Sometimes the answer is that you are safe with the breaker off and the visit can wait for morning, which is easier on you and gives us daylight to work in. Sometimes the answer is that someone is on the way now. We tell you which and we tell you why.

On site, the electrician starts at the source of power and works inward. Voltage at the meter, condition of the service entrance conductors, the main, then the branch circuits, using a meter and a thermal camera rather than guessing. The goal of an emergency visit is to make the property safe and restore what can be restored safely. If a panel has to be replaced, or a dock feeder rewired, or an entire branch circuit rerun, we will make it safe that night, isolate what has to stay off, and give you a clear scope for the permanent repair. Pricing for that repair is quoted after the electrician has seen the job, never over the phone. We do not sell panel upgrades at two in the morning.

This page covers failures. For planned work in the city, from dock circuits and service upgrades to lighting and generators, our Fort Lauderdale electrician near me page covers the daytime side of the business, and our electrical panel repair page explains what happens after an emergency reveals a panel that has reached the end of its life.

Areas We Cover in Fort Lauderdale

An emergency electrician in Fort Lauderdale has to know the bridges, because at night a drawbridge up on Las Olas or the 17th Street Causeway changes the route. We run the whole city, on both sides of the Intracoastal and both sides of the New River.

East of the Intracoastal that means the beach from the Bahia Mar basin north past Hugh Taylor Birch State Park to the Galt Ocean Mile towers, plus Harbor Beach and the Idlewyld and Las Olas Isles finger islands. Between the Intracoastal and Federal Highway it means Seven Isles, Nurmi Isles, Sunrise Key, Coral Ridge, Bermuda Riviera, Victoria Park, Colee Hammock and Rio Vista. West of Federal Highway and around downtown it means Flagler Village, Progresso Village, Sailboat Bend, Tarpon River, the Himmarshee blocks and the Riverwalk area on the New River. South and west it means Croissant Park, Edgewood, Riverland, Lauderdale Isles, Melrose Park, the Marina Mile boatyards on State Road 84, and the industrial and marine pockets around Port Everglades and the executive airport.

We reach all of it from our base in Hollywood by way of I-95 and US 1, then Davie, Broward, Sunrise or Oakland Park Boulevard depending on where you are. The rest of our coverage across Broward and the neighboring counties is on our service area page.

Talk to an Electrician in Fort Lauderdale

If the situation is one of the four at the top of this page, you should already be outside or out of the water. For everything else, the number for a Fort Lauderdale emergency electrician is (954) 602-0050, day or night, weekends and holidays included. Tell us what you are seeing, hearing and smelling, and we will tell you honestly whether it can wait or whether someone is coming now.

(954) 602-0050 is the only number we use. There is no dispatch center in another state, no call center reading a script, and no one who has never stood on a Fort Lauderdale dock at high tide telling you what to do about one.