One minute the kettle’s boiling and the lounge room TV is on, the next everything goes dark. If you live in kempsey or anywhere across the Mid North Coast, you’ve probably had this happen at least once, usually during a summer storm rolling in off the coast or a heavy southerly. We’ve taken plenty of after-hours calls from local families during exactly these conditions, so the steps below are what we genuinely walk homeowners through on the phone before we arrive.
Knowing what to do during a power outage keeps your family safe, protects your appliances, and helps you work out whether it’s a quick fix or a job for a licensed electrician.
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Step 1: Stay Calm and Check the Scale of the Outage
The first thing to work out is whether the blackout is just your home or the whole street. Look out the window. Are your neighbours’ lights on? Are streetlights still glowing? If the whole block is dark, it’s almost always a network issue handled by the local distributor.
In our region, Essential Energy manages the power network. You can check their outage map online or call 13 20 80 to confirm whether there’s a known fault, planned maintenance, or storm damage in the Kempsey area. If only your home has lost power, the problem is inside your property and you’ll need to dig a little deeper.
Step 2: Check Your Switchboard
Head to your switchboard, usually located near the front of the house, in the garage, or on an external wall. Have a look at the safety switches and circuit breakers. If one has flipped to the "off" position, a circuit has likely tripped because of an overloaded appliance, a faulty device, or a fault in the wiring.
Switch the breaker fully off, then back on. If power returns, great. If it trips again straight away, leave it off. Don’t keep resetting it. A safety switch that won’t stay on is doing exactly what it’s designed to do, which is protect you from a real electrical hazard. In a lot of older Mid North Coast homes we visit, we still see ceramic fuse boards and switchboards that haven’t been touched since the eighties, and those are the ones most likely to keep nuisance tripping. At that point you need a licensed sparkie to investigate the fault properly.
Step 3: Unplug Sensitive Appliances
When the power eventually comes back, it often returns with a surge. That sudden spike can fry TVs, computers, fridges, modems, and anything with a sensitive circuit board. Walk through the house and unplug the gear that matters most, especially anything expensive or hard to replace.
Leave one lamp or light switch in the "on" position so you’ll know the moment power is restored. If you find yourself losing equipment to surges regularly, it’s usually a sign the switchboard needs proper surge protection rather than relying on a handful of cheap powerboards. If you’d rather have a local team sort it for you, our emergency electrical team is on call across the Mid North Coast for exactly this kind of work.
Step 4: Keep the Fridge and Freezer Closed
Every time you open the fridge, cold air escapes. A closed fridge will keep food safe for around four hours, and a full freezer will hold its temperature for up to 48 hours. Resist the urge to “just check” what’s inside. If the outage looks like it’ll stretch beyond half a day, move essentials into an esky with ice.
Step 5: Use Safe Lighting and Avoid Candles
Reach for torches, head torches, or battery-powered lanterns rather than candles. Open flames are a real fire risk, especially with kids, pets, or curtains nearby. Keep a torch and spare batteries in a known spot so you’re not fumbling around in the dark.
If you have a generator, never run it indoors or in the garage. Carbon monoxide builds up fast and is deadly. Set it up outside, well away from windows and doors, and never plug it directly into a wall socket to "backfeed" the house. That’s one of the most dangerous shortcuts we see, because it can send live power back down the line and put network crews at risk.
Step 6: Watch for Warning Signs That Need an Electrician
Some outages aren’t just inconvenient, they’re a warning. From the jobs we attend across Kempsey, Frederickton, and the wider coast, the patterns are pretty consistent. Call a licensed electrician straight away if you notice:
These are signs of a fault that won’t sort itself out and could put your home at risk. After hours, on weekends, or over holidays, don’t wait until Monday. Faults like these tend to get worse, not better, the longer they’re left.
Be Ready Before the Next Blackout
A bit of prep makes the next outage far less stressful. Keep a small kit with a torch, spare batteries, a portable phone charger, bottled water, and a battery-powered radio. Save your distributor’s number and a trusted local electrician’s number in your phone. If your property runs on solar or has a battery system, make sure you know the safe isolation steps recommended by the installer, because shutting a solar PV system down incorrectly during a blackout can damage the inverter or create a live hazard on the roof.
Need a Local Sparkie on Standby?
Power outages happen, but you don’t have to figure them out alone. Activ Electrical Contracting is a family-run, fully licensed team based in Frederickton, servicing Kempsey and the wider Mid North Coast with 24/7 emergency callouts and an on-site response window of 20 to 60 minutes. Every job is handled directly by our licensed electrician, so you’re talking to the person doing the work, not a call centre.
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If your power’s out, your switchboard is tripping, or something doesn’t look right, get in touch with our team and we’ll have a qualified electrician on the way.
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