Storm Damage Electrical Repair

Storm damage electrical repair is the work that gets a property safely back on power after wind, water or a falling tree has broken part of the electrical system. It covers the service mast and meter enclosure torn off a wall, panels that took water, circuits that went under during a surge or a street flood, and the equipment that has to be replaced before a utility will reconnect anything.

After a named storm, the calls come in a predictable order: first the properties with no power and visible damage at the service, then the ones that got power back and immediately found something not working, then the ones where an insurance adjuster has asked for a scope. We work all three across Broward County, in Aventura, Golden Beach, North Miami, North Miami Beach and Sunny Isles Beach, and in Boca Raton and Delray Beach. This page explains who is responsible for what, what can be repaired, what has to be replaced, and how the power actually gets turned back on.

The line the utility draws, and why it decides your whole repair

The most useful thing to understand after a storm is where the utility's responsibility stops and yours begins, because it determines who you are waiting on and what you have to pay to have fixed.

On an overhead service, the utility owns and maintains the conductors coming from the pole up to the point where they connect to your property. Everything from that connection inward is customer-owned equipment: the weatherhead, the mast or riser, the service entrance conductors inside it, the meter enclosure, the main disconnect, the panel and every circuit past it. On an underground service, the split is at the point of connection at the transformer or the secondary box, and the conduit and conductors on your side of it are typically yours.

What this means in practice after a storm:

• A wire down in the street or in the yard is the utility's, and it is not yours to touch, move or step over. Assume every downed conductor is energized regardless of how it looks or whether the neighborhood has power.
• A mast pulled away from the wall, a bent riser, a broken weatherhead, or a meter can hanging loose is yours. The utility crew will come out, disconnect the service and often pull the meter for safety, and then they will leave. They will not rebuild your service entrance.
• Reconnection is conditional. Once the utility has disconnected a property for damage, they generally will not reconnect until the repair has been made, permitted and released by the local building department. That release is the piece homeowners do not expect and it is the piece that determines the timeline.

So the sequence for a damaged service is: our repair, the inspection, the release to the utility, then the reconnect. We can compress the first part. Nobody can skip the middle.

Mast, riser, weatherhead and meter enclosure

The service mast is the most commonly damaged customer-owned component in a wind event, because it is a lever. A branch or a piece of the neighbor's roof catches the service drop, and the drop pulls the mast sideways.

What we find and what each condition means:

• The mast is bent but the roof flashing is intact. Usually a mast, weatherhead and conductor replacement, with the roof penetration resealed. The conductors inside a bent mast get replaced rather than reused; bending damages insulation at the point of the bend and you cannot see it.
• The mast has pulled through the roof or off the wall. This becomes a coordinated repair with a roofer, because the structural attachment and the waterproofing are as much of the fix as the electrical part. Rebuilding a mast into rotted or torn sheathing without addressing the structure just sets up the next failure.
• The meter enclosure is cracked, crushed, pulled loose or full of water. The can gets replaced. A meter socket with damaged jaws, a bent hub or a compromised seal is not something to patch, and a can that has taken water will corrode from the inside where nobody is looking.
• Burned or arced lugs at the service. A service that took a surge or a phase-to-phase contact from a downed line often has damage at the terminations that is only visible with the cover off. We open and inspect, we do not assume.
• The main disconnect or main breaker was struck or soaked. Overcurrent devices at the service are the ones with the least margin for doubt. If it was submerged or it took a fault, it gets replaced.

In coastal neighborhoods, storm damage frequently reveals corrosion that was already advanced. Salt air works on service equipment continuously, and a can that was thin and pitted before the storm is a can that has to be replaced now rather than reinstalled. We would rather have that conversation while the meter is already pulled than come back for it.

Water in a panel: what gets dried and what gets thrown away

This is where the most money gets wasted and the most risk gets accepted, so it is worth being blunt about it.

Electrical equipment that has been submerged does not get dried out and put back in service. That includes panelboards, load centers, circuit breakers, safety switches, fused disconnects, transfer switches, contactors, motor starters and control equipment. Equipment manufacturers and industry guidance are consistent on this, and the reasons are specific.

A molded case circuit breaker is a sealed device you cannot open, inspect or recalibrate. Inside it are a thermal element and a magnetic element that determine when it trips. Water carrying salt, silt and organic contamination gets inside through the operating handle and the terminal openings, leaves conductive residue on the mechanism, and corrodes the contacts and the calibration components. The breaker will usually still switch on. What you cannot know is whether it will still open at the current it is marked for, which is the only thing it exists to do.

The panel enclosure and busbar have their own problem. Bus stabs and the plating on them corrode where contamination sits, and the connection between a breaker and a corroded stab runs hot. That failure develops over months, long after the water is a memory and long after anyone connects the two events.

Salt water makes all of it worse and faster. Storm surge and tidal flooding leave a chloride residue that keeps attracting moisture out of the humid air here indefinitely. A panel that took brackish water in a Fort Lauderdale or Dania Beach flood event is not in the same category as one that got rained on through an open window.

What can reasonably be evaluated rather than automatically replaced: equipment that was splashed or wetted but not submerged, where the water was clean, where it dried quickly, and where inspection shows no residue and no corrosion. We make that call with the cover off and a light, case by case, and we tell you which items we are comfortable with and which we are not.

Submerged receptacles, switches and branch circuits

Anything that went under gets evaluated on the same principle: can the contamination be removed and the condition verified. For most devices the answer is no, and replacement is cheaper than the diagnostic time anyway.

• Receptacles, switches, dimmers, ground fault and arc fault devices, and smart devices below the water line get replaced. Their contacts and internal components are not cleanable and their electronics are not trustworthy after immersion.
• Boxes get opened and cleaned or replaced, and every termination inside them gets inspected. Silt in a box is a sign that contaminated water sat there.
• Nonmetallic sheathed cable that has been submerged is a real problem because water travels inside the jacket by capillary action, well past the visible waterline, and it does not come back out. A cable that was under two feet of water in a wall can be wet fifteen feet up. That is why flood-damaged wiring so often gets replaced rather than tested, and why partial rewiring of the affected areas is the usual scope. On a badly flooded property this can turn into full replacement of the branch circuit wiring on the affected level.
• Conductors in conduit are somewhat better positioned, because the raceway can often be cleared, but a flooded conduit run holds water at every low point and the conductors get evaluated for insulation damage before anything is reenergized.
• Motors, air handlers, pool equipment, well pumps and appliances that were submerged need their own evaluation, and in most cases a motor that ran while wet or was energized while wet is finished.

The rule we work by: nothing gets reenergized because it looks dry. Circuits get tested for insulation integrity and continuity before they carry load, and anything that fails testing comes out.

Ceiling boxes, can lights and the water that came from above

Roof damage produces a different pattern from flooding, and it is easy to underestimate because the water is gone by the time anyone looks.

Water entering through a damaged roof runs along the top of the ceiling, finds the openings around recessed lights, ceiling fan boxes and smoke alarms, and drains through them. What you see is a stained ceiling. What is above it is a box full of water sitting on splices.

Fans are the ones we worry about most, because a ceiling fan hangs on a box supporting real weight and the fasteners and the box itself corrode. A soaked fan motor that gets switched on can also fail in a way that is more than an inconvenience.

Attic wiring is worth checking separately. Insulation gets saturated, cable staples and junction boxes sit in it, and in South Florida attics that water evaporates slowly into an already humid space. We check for corroded terminations and for boxes still holding water, and we look for the splices somebody made in the attic years ago without a box, which storms are very good at revealing.

Generators, cords and the mistakes made in the dark

Portable generators do more damage after storms in this region than the storms do to the equipment they replace, and almost all of it comes from three decisions.

Backfeeding. Someone builds or buys a cord with a male plug on both ends and pushes power from a generator into a dryer receptacle or a range outlet. This energizes the whole panel, including the service conductors and, through the utility transformer, the line outside. That line is where a crew is working. It also bypasses every protective device in the house and there is nothing preventing the utility from coming back on while the generator is running. We will not repair around one of these. The correct solution is an interlock or a transfer switch, and that is a permitted installation we do properly. Anyone who used a suicide cord during the outage should have the panel inspected afterward.

Cords. Extension cords sized for a lamp carrying a refrigerator and a window unit, run through a doorway and pinched, get hot in the middle where nobody can see. Cord runs at storm lengths also produce enough voltage drop to damage motors in refrigerators and air conditioners. Cords used outdoors need to be rated for it, and connections between them need to stay up out of standing water.

Placement. Generators produce carbon monoxide in quantities that kill people in garages, under carports, in screen enclosures and next to open windows. Every storm season this happens somewhere in South Florida. Outdoors, well away from the building, away from every opening, and never in a partially enclosed space.

Once the immediate crisis is over, the right time to fix the underlying problem is right then, while the outage is fresh. A properly installed standby generator or a permanently wired interlock and inlet for a portable unit eliminates the entire category of problem, and we would rather install one in November than triage another cord in September.

Before the adjuster arrives

Insurance claims for electrical damage succeed or fail on documentation, and the documentation has to exist before the repair, not after it. A few things make an enormous difference:

• Photograph everything before anything is touched. Wide shots that establish the location, then close shots of the damage. Photograph the mast, the meter enclosure, the panel with the cover on and with the cover off, the water line on the wall, the flooded areas, the damaged devices and the debris that caused the damage.
• Photograph the water line specifically, with something in frame for scale. The height of the water is what determines the scope of a flood-related electrical claim, and it disappears the moment anyone cleans.
• Keep the damaged parts. The crushed meter can, the burned breakers, the corroded devices. Bag them, label them with the location, and do not throw them out until the claim is settled. An adjuster asking to see the failed component and being told it went in the dumpster is a bad conversation.
• Write down the date and time that power was lost, that the utility disconnected, and that anything was observed to fail.
• Get the permit number. A permitted, inspected repair carries far more weight in a claim than an undocumented one.
• Ask for a written scope, not a verbal one. We provide a written scope that identifies each damaged component, the condition found, and the reason it requires repair or replacement. Adjusters need the reason stated, particularly for equipment that was submerged and looks fine.

Emergency work to make a property safe generally does not have to wait for an adjuster, and no reasonable carrier expects a property to stay hazardous. Document it first, then make it safe.

Permit, inspection and getting the utility to come back

When a service entrance has been damaged and the utility has cut power, restoring it is a paperwork process as much as an electrical one, and the order does not change.

We pull a permit with the jurisdiction the property sits in, which in this area could be any of a couple dozen municipal building departments plus the county. We make the repair. We call for inspection. The inspector releases the work, and the jurisdiction notifies the utility that the property is cleared for reconnection. The utility then schedules the reconnect and resets the meter.

Two things worth knowing about this window:

After a major storm, every part of that chain is under load at once. Building departments run emergency schedules and often prioritize service restoration inspections, and utility crews work a triage list that puts the largest number of customers first. We keep the permit and inspection side moving because that is the part we control, and we tell you honestly where in the process you are rather than guessing at a date.

Also: an inspector releasing a repaired service will look at the current condition of the service equipment, not only at the damaged piece. If the panel is an obsolete unit, if the grounding electrode system is not present or not connected, or if the meter and main are in a configuration that no longer complies, those items can come into scope. That is frustrating in the moment and it is also the reason a storm repair sometimes becomes a service upgrade or a panel replacement. We tell you that on the first visit rather than after the inspection fails.

Restoring a commercial property in the right order

A business with storm damage cannot fix everything at once, and the order it gets fixed in should follow risk and revenue, not whatever is easiest to reach.

The sequence we work through with property managers and owners:

• Make it safe and secure. Isolate damaged circuits and equipment, deal with standing water near energized gear, secure the service, and get life safety systems accounted for. Fire alarm, and exit and emergency lighting, are the first things a fire marshal asks about when a building reopens and the first things a battery-backed system loses after a long outage.
• Restore the service and the main distribution. Nothing downstream matters until the service entrance, the main switchgear and the primary distribution are sound. On larger properties this includes the transformer pad, the switchgear and any equipment that took water at grade level.
• Bring back the loads that prevent further loss. Refrigeration and walk-ins, sump and lift pumps, dehumidification, server rooms and the equipment that keeps a wet building from becoming a mold building. This is where temporary power, generators and temporary feeds earn their keep.
• Restore access and egress. Elevators, gates, garage doors, stairwell and corridor lighting, and parking lot and site lighting. A dark parking lot is a liability exposure the day the building reopens.
• Reopen the revenue space. Tenant areas, sales floors, kitchens, offices, and the branch circuits and lighting that go with them.
• Close out the paperwork. Final inspections, updated panel directories, as-built notes on what changed, and a written record for the carrier and for the next owner or tenant.

Multi-tenant properties add a layer, because the demarcation between landlord equipment and tenant equipment shapes who pays for each piece. We document which side of that line each repair falls on as we go, which prevents a much harder argument later. This work sits alongside what we do routinely for property management companies throughout the year.

The damage that shows up two weeks later

Not all storm damage is visible on the first walkthrough, and a fair number of our post-storm calls come from properties that were fine until they were not.

Three patterns account for most of it. First, repeated outages and restorations put voltage transients through a building; equipment that survived the storm gets killed by the fifteenth restoration surge. Second, water that entered a wall or a panel takes weeks to produce visible corrosion at a termination, and the failure presents as a warm outlet, a flickering circuit or a breaker that starts tripping. Third, mechanical damage that did not quite break something leaves it hanging by a thread, and the next windy week finishes the job.

The most common single item we replace after a storm season is a surge protective device that did its job and is now spent. These devices are consumable, their indicator lights are the only way you know, and a house that took several strikes' worth of transients may have a protector that stopped protecting in August. Checking it, and adding whole home surge protection where none exists, is inexpensive work with a large payoff in this part of the country.

If something in your building is behaving differently than it did before the storm, that is information. Lights that dim on a circuit that never dimmed, a breaker that now trips, an outlet that stopped working, a burning or fishy smell near a panel, a hot cover plate: any of those after a storm is a reason to call rather than a reason to wait and see.

What we do on a first visit

An initial storm damage visit is an assessment, and it produces a document you can use.

We start at the service and work in: the drop and the attachment, the mast, the weatherhead, the can, the main disconnect, the grounding electrode system and its connections. We open the panel and look at the busbar, the breakers, the neutrals and grounds, and the terminations, checking for water lines, silt, corrosion and heat damage. We test circuits before energizing them rather than after. We check for standing water anywhere near energized equipment, and we isolate what needs isolating on the spot.

Then we walk the affected areas and inventory what was submerged, what was rained on and what is undamaged, and we photograph as we go. What you get back is a list organized into three groups: what has to be replaced and why, what we are recommending be replaced with the reason stated, and what is serviceable. That structure is what an adjuster needs and it is what lets an owner decide where the budget goes.

If the property has no power and the service is damaged, we tell you on that visit what the repair involves, what the permit and inspection path looks like, and what has to happen before the utility can reconnect.

Call us when the wind stops

Damaged service equipment does not get safer while it waits, and a panel that took water is a slow problem that turns into a fast one. If your mast is down, your meter can is damaged, water reached your panel, or your building came back on and something is not right, call (954) 602-0050.

We answer at (954) 602-0050 around the clock, we dispatch the closest available electrician, and we handle the permit and the inspection that stand between a repaired service and a utility reconnect. For urgent conditions, our emergency electrical repair team works the same phone line, and you can reach us any time through our contact page. If you want to be in better shape before the next one, our guide to hurricane and storm electrical preparation covers what to do ahead of the season.