What to do in an electrical emergency?

There are a number of electrical emergencies that can occur in your home, when your out at work or in a public place. Electrical shocks can cause a wide range of injuries for a painful jolt to severe burns and heart failure. Electricity is dangerous and i hope this article helps inform you about what to do in the event of an electrical emergency.

The most common electrical emergency is some one receiving the electric shock. The first thing you should do if some one receives an electric shock is separate the person form the source of the shock as quickly as possible. The best way to to this is to turn the supply of at the mains – flip all of your fuzes.

Don’t touch the person or the object involved if you think you might get an electrical shock as well (its better to have one person with electrical injuries and 1 person helping than having 2 people suffering form electric shock)

Then you should phone an ambulance. Then you can examine the person (check their pulse and breathing) and administer first aid as appropriate.

If you don’t know how to do first aid the 999 responder not he phone can talk you through the process. in these circumstances first aid trainers tell me that even if you don’t know what you’re doing trying to help is better than doing nothing at all.

Any visible burns of blisters should be covered (the best thing to use is cling film because its clean and easily applied). Don’t try to move the person until the ambulance has arrived – then they will then take over.

Shocks can occur form any of the following:

• Faulty appliances
• Damaged wiring or extension plugs
• Electrical items coming into contact with water
• Faulty wiring

Power failures and blackouts can have a number of causes. Storms are the most common – song winds and rain fall bring down power lines or cause vehicles to collide with power lines and disrupt the network.   I can just be your home or building so its worth checking your trip switches and go and speak to your neighbours – if there electric is out as well it likely to be a electrical grid problem.

In this circumstance you should call your electric supplier and let them know. Phone numbers for all of the UK’s electric suppliers are listed at the end of this blog post.

The best thing to do is in a power outage is to switch of all your electrical goods because when the power comes back on they can cause problems (electrical ovens, deep fat fryers, electric heaters can come back on when the electricity comes back on and cause fires).

I would also suggest having a torch and possibly a battery powered radio stored in your home.