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?
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Water (even salty water) isn’t *that* conductive. Despite what movies and “common knowledge” might tell you a regular mains voltage submerged live wire won’t shock everyone/everything that touches the water. [ElectroBOOM explains it well](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcrY59nGxBg), basically the electric current flows through the path of least resistance to the ground, considering how much of a poor conductor water is, this means even if your body was the path of least resistance you’d still be safe just a few inches/centimeters away.
That being said, during a flood the breakers either detect current flowing directly to the ground or a short circuit which should trip them and cut the power.
I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere, but during the recent flooding in Germany, the news said that the local public utilities had cut power to prevent accidents.
Think about what path electricity would prefer to take. [A live wire in water isn’t actually particularly dangerous,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcrY59nGxBg) as long as the ground is also nearby. The electricity would still much rather take the shortest path to ground through the water than through the human body. But in the case of a flood, the ground is *everywhere*. So, assuming fifty billion circuit breakers haven’t tripped and interrupted the circuit yet, the electricity is just going to flow from the ~~positive~~ charged terminal to the ground, in all directions, and the voltage would quickly drop to zero.
You get electrocuted when you stick a fork in a socket because all that electricity is going directly into you. When a flood happens, that’s a much larger space for all the electricity to flow into. As such, the electricity won’t be as intense to the point where it affect lives. It’s similar to the concept of grounding. When you ground some electricity, you’re providing a route for electricity to flow into the ground because the Earth is a much larger body than yourself.
The caveat though… if a small and insulated area like a bathtub or wading pool gets flooded and hits electricity, that body of water will probably be electrified enough to kill.
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