While today saw more deadly storms raging across the Saint Louis area, sparks were flying inside my apartment.
I noticed this morning that my lights and power were flickering. The problem seemed to get worse toward the late afternoon, when a power spike fried three of my surge protectors and took out the GFI outlet in my bathroom. Inside the breaker panel, I found sparking and arcing going on at the common line - an indicator of a short somewhere.
I tried isolating the short by systematically turning off each breaker in turn, but could not find a specific culprit. So, right now, I've got all the breakers off, except the essentials: the breaker with the refrigerator, and one with the bedroom outlet with my alarm clock. (The laptop is running on battery power right now.)
Worse yet, nobody was answering the emergency maintenance line for the apartment complex. I'm pretty sure I've mitigated any risk of an electrical fire tonight, and hopefully someone can get over first thing tomorrow to find out the problem.
