*How To Unplug A Household Electrical Cord*
By: John1lt
31 October 2019

Last night my wife woke me up at 3 am to tell me there was a spark, then the lights went out when she was unplugging her laptop. After a few drowsy moments I finally understood what she was trying to tell me. I figured the breaker popped so I turned on the flashlight on my cell phone and unplugged the laptop and inspected the cord. The plug was about to fall off the cord and I could see the copper wires at the backside of the plug end. I told her I would fix the cord in the morning then went and flipped the breaker back on and went back to bed.

This morning I inspected the cord more closely, it didn't look melted. I asked my wife how she was unplugging the cord, by grabbing the head and pulling it out or jerking on the cord to remove it from the wall socket? She said she was probably just jerking on the cord. I told her to stop doing that so she doesn't electrocute herself or burn the house down. I then told her and showed her to grab the plug head not the cord to remove the electrical cord from the wall socket.

The right way:

The wrong way:

I've been guilty of occasionally grabbing the cord and jerking on it to unplug it quickly but last nights incident really brought home the dangerous damage that can cause. Fortunately the electrical breaker did it's job and there wasn't a catastrophic failure resulting in damage or worse a death do to a simple problem that could have been avoided.

The other lesson from last night was to inspect electrical cords periodically for damage. If I had inspected the cord and noticed the damage I could have replaced it sooner and avoided the near miss last night.

I know this is simple and a lot of people are thinking that "everyone knows that" but sometimes we forget and need a reminder and sometimes people haven't been taught correctly if they've even been taught at all.

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