When extreme flooding happens, why aren’t people being electrocuted to death left and right?

Question

There has been so much flooding recently, and Im just wondering about how if a house floods, or any other building floods, how are people even able to stand in that water and not be electrocuted?

Aren’t plugs and outlets and such covered in water and therefore making that a really big possibility?

In: 11434

Answer 1

The simple answer is – ordinary water isn’t very conductive. Consider that all your wiring and plugs and are already submerged in air and you are yourself in contact with that air, but you don’t get electrocuted. Pure water is more conductive than air, but still not enough to significantly affect you from any reasonable distance.

Now, if you were to have things dissolved in the water that increase its conductivity (like salt if the flooding is from seawater), conductivity will be greatly enhanced. However the electricity will take the shortest available path, which in most cases is right across the water standing between the two prongs of the plug sockets. That’s why you’ll see an arc across the plug’s contacts. The electricity has no reason to jump all the way to wherever you’re standing, some distance away from the exposed plugs.

If you were to drop a hairdryer in a bathtub though, it’s a little different. Your hand and body are right near the electrified heating element. Most of the electricity will take the normal path through the hairdryer. But some will take a secondary path through you. If you’re unlucky it will be enough to interrupt the electrical signals to your heart and cause it to stop.

Also, especially in saltwater or otherwise contaminated water, a downed mains wire or damaged underground cable can cause electrocution if you swim or wade very close to it. Firstly, power/distribution lines can carry higher voltages than what’s in your house, increasing their effective range, and secondly you will be standing very close to one end of the wire with no electrical ground (return) nearby, so you become the ground/return path. Conversely, in a home mains socket, the live and ground (return) are right next to each other (hence the two pins).