Cool, half the power in my apartment just went out!

I went to turn on a lamp's light switch. All of a sudden, the kitchen and living room lights went out.

I've two other lamps on the same side of the wall. One does not work, yet the other does! I can presume they're on two different circuits, oddly...

Both my computers are still running, as is the printer... :shrug:

The lights switches don't work yet the electric outlets on the same panel DO work!!

The circuit breaker suggests little #9 has partially clicked to the 'off' position (it appears to be stuck in the middle!).

Do these things click themselves off periodically, like once every 7 years, just for fun or something?!

I'd rather not risk a full outage as my cell phone's new battery is charging and needs to have power for 24 hours straight, according to Radio Shack's salesman...

Should I leave it be until tomorrow night to put the circuit switch back into "on"? The fridge and oven work (though the light and fan above the oven don't).

Sorry to be so namby-pamby, I've never quite experienced this before! :eyes:

Is there smoke coming from any electrical outlet? Do you have a resident manager you can call?

breaker off then back on....that should reset the circuit.

Switch it to Off and then back to On, it should reset just fine. This happens at my house sometimes.

That way you minimize the chance of having the circuit breaker flip off again as soon as you turn it back on...

Turn any appliances & utinsils on the dead circuit off, if they have manual off switches. Then push the circuit breaker switch to full-off, then back to on. If it stays on, fine. Turn items back on one at a time and see if it cuts back out. If nothing causes it to cut out, then don't worry about it further. It was probably a momentary power surge. It may or may not be coincidence that it happened just as you flipped a switch-- a light bulb will not usually do something like that, as it is in design a sort of fuse all by itself, in a way.

If it refuses to reset or turn back on, the breaker itself may be faulty-- it's a matter of opening the panel, pulling the breaker out, and taking it to the hardware store to show the salesman, so it can be replaced with the proper one. Pay attention, and you can push the new one into place without fear or damage to anything. Either that, or have a friend do it, if you don't feel confident about getting close to the source (so to speak).

Duh, it must've been a short in the lamp I was trying to turn on that caused the outage. Very odd... how often does a lamp short out an electrical circuit to the point the breaker kicks in?!