Burning smell, sparks or an electric shock: what to do

If anyone is in danger, ring 112 now

If someone has been shocked, if there is fire, or if you are standing near sparking equipment you cannot get away from, stop reading and call 112.

The European Commission states that 112 is free everywhere in the EU from both landlines and mobiles, and that it reaches the ambulance service, the fire brigade and the police. Malta is in the EU. Operators can often answer in English. They can locate the caller if you do not know where you are, which matters if you are in an unfamiliar block, on a roof or on a site. There are text and real-time text options for people with disabilities. It is for real emergencies only.

Everything below is for after that call, or for when nobody is hurt.

Electric shock: what the published guidance says

There is a gap we should name straight away. We could not find a Maltese organisation publishing written electric-shock first aid online — the Malta Red Cross and St John Malta publish training courses rather than step-by-step guidance. So the steps below come from UK safety guidance: St John Ambulance and the NHS-backed Healthier Together page on electric shocks in children. They agree with each other closely. St John's advice is for low-voltage domestic electricity.

Do not touch them

The first rule in both sources is the same: do not touch a person who is still in contact with the electricity. If you grab them, the current goes through you too and there are now two casualties and nobody to call for help.

Break the contact

1. Turn the power off. Switch off at the socket, or at the mains if you can reach it safely. The NHS page puts the mains switch first: switch off at the mains to break contact.
2. If you cannot reach the power, UK guidance says to stand on dry insulating material — a plastic mat or a wooden box — and push the person's limb away from the source using a broom handle or a wooden pole.
3. If that is not possible, loop a rope under their arms or around their ankles and pull them clear, without touching them yourself.

Once contact is broken

Both sources say the same thing: once the contact is broken, check the person and treat their injuries, and call the emergency services immediately — 112 in Malta. St John lists cardiac arrest and burns among the possible effects of an electric shock.

We are not going to write CPR steps or burn treatment here. Getting those wrong in print is worse than not printing them. St John Ambulance links to its own CPR and burns pages from the electric shock page, and those are the pages to follow.

Someone who has had a shock should be assessed even if they seem fine afterwards — the NHS page routes shocked children to emergency care via A&E or the emergency number. We are not quoting hospital phone numbers because the official Maltese page carrying them would not load for us; ring 112 and let the operator route you.

High voltage is different. None of these sources covers safe distances from high-voltage or overhead equipment, so we will not invent one. If the shock involved street cables, a substation or overhead lines: keep away, call 112, and call Enemalta.

A burning smell or a sparking noise indoors

London Fire Brigade's home fire safety guide — again, UK guidance — is direct about this: if you smell burning or hear electrical sparking noises, unplug the appliance and seek expert advice.

That is the whole of what the source says, and it is worth doing before you start hunting for the cause. If the smell is coming from a socket, a distribution board or inside a wall rather than from a single appliance, you cannot unplug it — that is the point at which switching off the relevant circuit at the board and getting an electrician out is the sensible reading of "seek expert advice".

If there is fire

London Fire Brigade's guidance for a fire in the home is to follow your escape plan and get out:

• Shout to warn everyone else in the property.
• Do not stop for valuables.
• Check doors with the back of your hand and do not open a door that is warm.
• Keep low, under the smoke.
• Close doors behind you.
• Do not use lifts — relevant in most Maltese apartment blocks.
• If your escape is blocked, stay in a room, close the door, block the gaps around it, and call for help from a window.

The LFB leaflet tells readers to call 999, because it is written for London. In Malta the number is 112.

The same guide covers prevention: never overload sockets, do not leave items on continuous charge, fit smoke alarms and test them, and do not fit a smoke alarm in a bathroom — a heat alarm belongs in the kitchen.

Sparks or damage outside: call Enemalta

If the sparking is in the street, on the supply side, or on network equipment rather than inside your installation, that is Enemalta's. Its When things go wrong page asks people to report damaged or dangerous network equipment — broken or low-hanging aerial lines, dislodged cable brackets, sparks — and to request emergency support or disconnection after severe property damage including fire. The 24/7 line it publishes is 8000 2224.

The rough division: sparks from your own sockets, appliances or board are an electrician's job; sparks from poles, aerial lines, brackets, street cabinets and the supply equipment feeding the building are Enemalta's. If you genuinely cannot tell, report it to Enemalta and keep people away from it. If anyone is in danger, 112 first.

Warning signs that are not yet an emergency

London Fire Brigade's electrical items page lists the signs of loose or dangerous wiring:

• scorch marks on sockets, plugs or around fittings
• flickering lights
• hot plugs and sockets
• fuses blowing, or circuit breakers tripping, for no obvious reason

Its advice is to get a qualified electrician to check the installation. The same page says to use one plug per socket for high-power appliances, to fully unwind cable drums before use, and not to overload extension leads. For scale: LFB says it has attended 26,376 electrical fires in London since 2017, around 24 a week of them involving chargers, batteries and cables.

In a flat, anything that involves the common parts — risers, shared meter cupboards, the intake into the block — brings the condominium into it as well as the electrician, and that is a conversation for after the immediate danger has passed, not during it.

What we could not confirm

We would rather say this than quietly fill it in. No Maltese first-aid body publishes these shock steps online that we could find, so the steps above are foreign guidance, labelled. The Civil Protection Department's home fire advice could not be read — the government pages returned 403 errors — so the fire steps are London Fire Brigade's. The widely repeated line about never using water on an electrical fire is not established by anything we loaded, so we have not stated it. And we have not printed any hospital emergency number, because the official page carrying it would not load and a wrong number in an emergency is a real harm. Ring 112.