Hurricane electrical prep for New Orleans homes

By Torriono Kelly, master electrician · New Orleans · September 10, 2026

Most storm damage we get called out for is not dramatic. It is a panel that took water and got switched back on anyway, a generator wired in a way that could have killed somebody, and a house full of appliances that died the moment the lights came back. All three are avoidable, and none of them take long.

Know these three things before the season, not during it

Where your main breaker is, and that it actually moves. Go find it. Open the panel door, put a hand on the main, and confirm it throws and resets. People discover a seized main at the worst possible moment, in the dark, with water coming in. If it does not move easily, that is a call now, not in November.

Which circuits matter to you. If you ever run on a generator, you need to know which breakers feed the refrigerator, a few lights, the window unit and the outlets you charge phones at. Label them. A labeled panel is worth an hour of stress later.

Whether your panel is one of the bad ones. If it says Federal Pacific, Stab-Lok or Zinsco on it, the breakers may not trip when they need to — before a storm or after one. That is worth handling on a calm Tuesday. See panel upgrades.

Generators: the one rule that matters more than all the others

Do not run a cord from a generator into a dryer outlet or any other receptacle in the house. It has a name — backfeeding — and it does two things. It sends power backwards out of your house and onto the utility line, where it can kill a lineman working to get your neighborhood back. And it bypasses your main breaker, so nothing is protecting the wiring in your walls.

Every safe connection goes through either a transfer switch (automatic, for a standby unit) or a mechanical interlock with an inlet box (for a portable). Both make it physically impossible for the generator and the utility to be connected at the same time. That is the entire point of the hardware.

The rest of generator safety is short and non-negotiable:

• Outside only, well away from the house. Not in the garage, not on the porch, not under a carport with the door open. Carbon monoxide from a generator kills people every storm season, and it kills them indoors near a running engine they thought was far enough away.
• Away from windows, doors and vents, and pointed so the exhaust blows away from the house.
• Let it cool before refueling. Gasoline on a hot engine.
• Start it before the season and run it under load. A portable that has sat in the garage since last year is not a plan, it is a hope. A standby unit exercises itself weekly; a portable does not.

If you are weighing a portable against a whole-home standby unit, both are covered on the generator installation page, including the sizing mistake that leaves people with a generator that stalls the moment the air conditioning starts.

The damage nobody expects: the surge when power comes back

Here is the thing that surprises people. Appliances usually do not die when the power goes out. They die when it comes back on.

Restoration is a switching event. When the utility re-energizes a circuit, the voltage transient that follows travels straight into the house, and it lands on whatever is still plugged in — the refrigerator, the HVAC control board, the television, every LED fixture. Over a long storm season with repeated outages and restorations, that happens again and again.

Two defenses, and you want both. A whole-home surge protective device at the panel takes the large events arriving from outside. Decent point-of-use protection at the computer and television handles what gets through. About an hour to install the panel device, and it costs less than the one HVAC control board it is there to save.

If you are evacuating and have no surge protection at the panel, unplug what you can before you leave. It is a crude version of the same idea and it works.

If flooding is expected at your house

Shut the main breaker off before water reaches the panel, and do it standing somewhere dry. Unplug what you can reach. If water is already near the panel, do not touch it — leave, and call once it is safe.

Coming back afterward, the rule is simple and people break it constantly: do not turn anything back on until a panel that has been underwater has been looked at. A submerged panel holds corrosion on the bus bar and inside the breakers. It does not dry out and return to normal. Breakers that have been in water may not trip when they need to, which means the protection you are counting on is not there. Most flooded panels get replaced.

Same goes for outlets, switches and fixtures that were underwater. They get replaced, not dried out.

After the storm: what is Entergy's, and what is yours

This is the part that costs people the most time, because they call the wrong number and wait.

Entergy owns the line from the pole to the point where it attaches to your house, and the meter itself. Lines down in the street, a transformer out, the whole block dark — that is Entergy, and there is nothing an electrician can do to speed it up.

You own the weatherhead, the mast, the service entrance conductors, the meter can, and everything from there into the house. So if wind or a falling limb pulled the mast off your wall, or the meter can is hanging loose, Entergy will not reconnect you until a licensed electrician repairs it — and Entergy will not do that repair. It is one of the most common calls we take in the days after a storm, and the households who understand this get their power back a day or two before the ones who do not.

If you cannot tell which side of that line your damage falls on, call and describe it. Sorting it out on the phone takes two minutes and costs nothing.

The short version

• Find your main breaker and confirm it moves. Label the circuits that matter.
• Never backfeed a generator. Transfer switch or interlock, always.
• Generator outside, far from the house, exhaust pointed away.
• Get surge protection at the panel before the season, not after the loss.
• Flooded panel gets evaluated, not switched on.
• Mast and meter can are yours. Entergy will not reconnect until they are fixed.

Related

The home electrical safety checklist covers the year-round routine. For the work itself: generator installation, whole-home surge protection, panel upgrades, and 24/7 emergency service.