ELECTRICAL FIRE! National grid visit/emergency call out. Why you need regular EICRs.

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In this video, we were called out to an electrical fire at Oakhampton, Devon.
We got the call at 11am whilst we were at another job and dropped what we were doing to get to this job asap.
When we arrived, the customer was still in shock and explained what had happened.
Apparently since the electric shower had been installed, there was a buzzing from the consumer unit every time it was used. (this was due to an overloaded breaker). She was having a shower when the RCD exploded into flames. She quickly wrapped a towel around herself and ran past the flames and spitting sparks. The fire was quite extreme at this point and black smoke filled the upstairs of the property. She ran upstairs, grabbed the cat and ran back outside, in the rain, in her towel and called the fire services.
We arrived at 12pm and national grid had already been to cut the supply off and fire services had left after putting the fire out.
After assessing the damage, we collected the relevant materials from the wholesaler and started to remove all fire damaged electrical equipment, plaster, plasterboard and cut back burnt cables for jointing.
There were cables coming from multiple directions and most of them had to be sent to an upstairs cupboard for jointing.
We then installed a new fireproof backboard, enclosure and left space for the new meter and cutout.
National grid could not get back out to us until 2am so we called at a day at 9pm. The customer was able to stay at her mums over the way that evening.
We rearranged national grids visit time from 2am to 4pm, this gave us the chance to get most of the job finished before they arrived to power back up.
Next day we continued with the jointing upstairs and connection of the new consumer unit. National grid then came back to install the new cut out meter and supply cable, one of the gentlemen kindly explains what they had to do.
This video is a perfect example of why our current fire regulations are so important and why getting regular electrical installation condition reports is vital! You get your boiler safely checked every year, why would you not get your electrical installation safety checked every 5 years?
TIMESTAMPS
00:20 Walkthrough of the job
04:01 Dismantle the old consumer unit
05:00 All fire damaged equipment removed
06:12 Why current regulations and EICRs are important. What happened to the customer during the fire.
09:57 New backboard and enclosure fitted
11:21 National grid visit
13:08 Look upstairs at the cables that need jointing
15:57 New consumer unit installed

[@Dog-whisperer7494]

Hats off to you sir for getting that mess sorted out and made safe. Well done 👏. I think I would have walked away from that one. That looked like a right pig off a job.

[@MiloDavis93]

90% sure the problem will have started when the smart meter was installed, most meter workers are not given full electrician training so can't legally go into RCD isolators or consumer units. Those RCD isolators can be a pain when they have clamp type connections, always coming loose when disturbed, that's why they need to be clipped in place before changing the meter 😬