A New Mexico electrician was in the middle of a job when he got an emergency call from a woman whose house smelled like fish. Here’s why that’s so concerning.
TikTok user James Allen (@jimallen2) posted a video with his electrician PSA earlier this week. “As a lot of you know, I am a master electrician, and I am going to save you real problems,” Allen says to start the video. “I’m going to give you some advice that only an electrician is going to know.”
Electrician’s Warning About Fish Smell
For example, he says he was once called out to the home of a woman complaining that her house smelled like fish. The dispatcher at the office initially wanted to tell the woman she needed another kind of professional for the job. “I go, uh uh, she needs an electrician. I’m headed there right now,” he says.
Allen says he knew immediately this could be an emergency. “Here’s the thing,” he says. “If you’re not cooking fish and your house smells like fish? That is a wire burning on the installation. It’s burning that plastic rubber stuff on the installation. That’s not just some weird smell. If you smell fish, the first thing you need to do is go into your breaker box and turn everything off. And then call an electrician.”
When Allen arrived, the woman pointed him to an area in the master bedroom of her home. Within a few minutes, he found the problem, which he addressed. “Got the lady’s power back on,” he says. “The lady didn’t have to burn her house down. Because she smelled fish.”
Viewers React to the Electrician’s Fish Smell PSA
In the comments section of the video, viewers backed up Allen’s statements about the relationship between a random fishy smell and electrical fires.
“When I was 9, I’ll never forget the time my grandfather was home alone and I went by to say hello,” wrote one person. “I walked in the door and smelled fish. He couldn’t smell anything. I looked behind his TV where the AC was plugged in and the entire socket was smoking.”
“Woke up out of a dead sleep at 4 a.m. a few months ago because of a strong smell,” said a second person. “It wasn’t a smoke smell. We had a house fire start minutes after.”
“This is for my fellow super smellers,” wrote a third person. “The actual profile is a blend: Ozone and phenol and amine. Not fish, per se, but an unstable mix of oxidative and nitrogenous volatiles. Most people’s ‘fish’ label is just a rough shorthand for that sharp, plastic-sweet odor.”
Why Does Burning Insulation Smell Like Fish?
That commenter is right on the money. When a circuit in your home overheats, it can melt the plastic components and insulation around it. That jumpstarts a chemical reaction that puts out the “volatile organic compounds” that remind your brain of the smell of fish.
About five years ago, a Reddit user posted to r/LifeProTips with a similar story of how someone noticing a fishy odor led to them preventing a house fire. “I remembered what my grandpa, a career electrician, used to tell me,” the user wrote. “Strange fishy odor = potential electrical fire.”
@jimallen2 How to prevent electrical house fires. #electrical #fire#safety
BroBible contacted Allen via TikTok comment and direct message for comment.