When the lights drop, the first ten minutes are for answering one question: is this the grid, or is this your house? Look outside. If the neighbors are dark too, it is a utility outage, and your job is to report it, keep the fridge shut, and wait it out safely. If the neighbors have lights, or only part of your house went dead, the problem is on your side of the meter, and that is electrical work rather than a waiting game.
Minutes 1 and 2: figure out whose problem this is
Step outside and look up and down the block. Dark neighbors, dark streetlights, and a dead signal at the corner all point at the utility. Most of the Portland metro is served by PGE or Pacific Power, and both keep live outage maps and take reports online or by phone, so file one from your cell even if you assume a neighbor already did. Crews route their work off those reports.
If your street is lit and you are not, the outage stops at your service. Same story if the power is out in part of the house and fine everywhere else. Our help pages on half the house losing power and power going out in one room walk through what each of those patterns usually means.
Minutes 3 to 5: check the panel, once
Open the panel door and read the breakers. A tripped breaker often sits slightly off from its neighbors instead of in a clean off position. Reset it one time: push it firmly all the way to off, then back to on. If it holds, note what was running when it blew, because a breaker that keeps tripping is reporting a real problem on that circuit. If it trips again right away, leave it off. That is a short or a ground fault, and resetting it over and over is how a bad circuit becomes a fire. That one is a repair call.
Two things stop the checklist cold: a burning or hot-plastic smell near the panel or an outlet, and a panel that is warm, buzzing, or scorched. Both mean hands off, main breaker off if you can reach it safely, and a call out. Do not remove the panel cover itself. That cover holds back live parts, and what is behind it is licensed-electrician territory.
Minutes 5 to 8: protect what is plugged in
Storm outages rarely end cleanly. Power tends to come back with a jolt, or cycle on and off while crews switch circuits around, and that is hard on anything with a circuit board in it. Unplug the computers, the TV, the modem, and the game console. A whole-home surge protector installed at the panel handles this permanently, worth remembering when you decide what to fix before next winter.
Turn off the heavy loads that were running when the lights went out, too: space heaters, the oven, the dryer. When the grid returns, every big load in the neighborhood restarting at once is exactly what makes lights flicker and breakers trip in the first hour. Leave one lamp switched on so you know the moment power is back. Keep the fridge and freezer shut, and know that a full freezer holds its cold far longer than an empty one.
Minutes 8 to 10: heat, water, and the generator question
The outages that actually last around here are the wind and ice events between late October and February, and they take the furnace with them, since even a gas furnace needs power for its blower and controls. A wood stove or a fireplace that lights without electricity is your heat. What is never your heat: a charcoal grill, a camp stove, or an unvented propane heater running indoors. Carbon monoxide is what hurts people during outages, not the dark.
If you already own a portable generator, run it outside, well away from doors and windows, and feed appliances with their own cords or through a properly installed inlet. Never plug a generator into a wall outlet to power the house. That backfeeds your service line and can kill a lineworker restoring your neighborhood. The legal way to connect is a transfer switch or a panel interlock, installed ahead of time by an electrician. And if this is the outage that finally decides it for you, the real question is portable versus standby. Our generator installation page covers how each one gets wired and what the install involves.
What not to do in those ten minutes
- Do not go near a downed line, and do not drive over one. Assume every downed line is live, keep everyone well back, and call 911 and the utility.
- Do not reset the same breaker again and again when it will not hold.
- Do not run a generator in the garage, on the porch, or under an open window, even with the door up.
- Do not light candles if you have any other option. Battery lanterns and phone flashlights do not tip over onto the couch.
- Do not open the freezer to check on it. Checking is what warms it.
When to call an electrician
Call if your house is dark while the street is lit, if half the house is out, if a breaker will not hold, if you smell burning near the panel or an outlet, or if you can see damage where the service line lands on your house. The mast, weatherhead, and meter base on your wall are the homeowner's side of that connection; the line running out to the pole belongs to the utility. None of those are wait-until-Monday problems.
For repair calls, our $95 service visit covers dispatch and a visual assessment by a licensed electrician. For planned work like a generator or a panel upgrade, ballpark quotes by phone or photo are free. Either way, get in touch and we will tell you straight whether this is a wait-for-the-utility problem or a call-us-now problem.