I keep seeing videos of people coming home to a burst pipe or the neighbors above them having a flood. The water pours down from the ceiling and from the light fixtures (lights are on), but the people walking around the house don’t get electrocuted.
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Quite a few reasons.
1. A flooded house needs to be pretty extreme before it gets to the height of power outlets. Usually water flows either down stairs or out doors before it builds up in a house (unless we’re talking about water from outside coming in). The wide majority of wiring in a house is insulated, so some water running near those wires isn’t a problem. This is why you can have your electrical wires in the wall right next to your metal water pipes without causing a problem.
2. Electrical systems will typically shut off when they’re drawing an unsafe amount of electricity — this is what the circuit breakers in your house do. By the time you could walk into an electrified pool, the circuit has probably been shut down.
3. Home electric systems don’t have that much power relative to a giant pool of water. If a whole home is flooded, any electricity in the pool is being spread out, making it less dangerous.
4. Electricity is really only dangerous when it is going somewhere. Electricity is lazy and will usually take the easiest path. Jumping in a non-continuous stream of water from the lamp to the floor isn’t *generally* going to be easier than just going through the lamp.
As for actual flooded homes — where people are probably walking around with rubber boots in several thousand gallons of water — the human body is probably not the most conductive path to ground. So even if there is electricity, it probably won’t try to run through a person.
That said, live power lines are *always dangerous*, so don’t just go walking around in random flooded houses assuming its safe.
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