Do this in the first 60 seconds
First, don't touch the switchboard itself. Second, if you can smell burning or see smoke, get everyone out of the house before you do anything else, including before you try to find the main switch. Third, if it's safe to reach the main switch from outside the immediate area, turn it off. This cuts power to the whole property and removes the risk while you wait for help. Fourth, call a licensed electrician for emergency assessment. Don't try to restore power yourself, and don't have anyone else try either, until it's been professionally checked.
What buzzing usually means versus what a burning smell means
Buzzing or humming, without any smell, generally points to a loose connection somewhere in the board, arcing at a terminal, or a failing breaker or RCD. It's a real fault, but in most cases the board hasn't reached a point of active thermal damage yet. This still needs a same-day visit, not a same-week one, because loose connections get worse, not better, on their own.
A burning or plastic smell, scorch marks, discolouration, or a bubbling appearance on the board's surface is different. That's a sign internal components are already running hot enough to damage their own housing, which is the stage just before an actual fire. This is the scenario where you don't wait for a callback, you evacuate the area and call immediately.
When it's safe to wait for a scheduled visit
Not every switchboard issue is an emergency. A single breaker that trips once, resets fine, and doesn't trip again is usually just a circuit doing its job during a genuine overload, like a kettle and a heater running together. If nothing smells, nothing's warm to touch, and the power's back on and stable, that can reasonably wait for a booked appointment.
The line to watch for: if it happens once, that's information. If it happens repeatedly, or if it's accompanied by any smell, sound, or visible marking on the board, that's no longer a wait-and-see situation.
What we check when we arrive
On an emergency callout, the first job is isolating the fault safely, not guessing at it with the power still live. From there it's a methodical check: loose or corroded connections, breakers and RCDs that aren't switching cleanly, signs of moisture, and whether the board itself has enough capacity for what's actually plugged in around the house now.
Most of the time the fix is contained, a terminal re-tightened, a failed breaker replaced. Sometimes what caused the buzzing is a symptom of a board that's simply past its working life, in which case we'll tell you straight rather than patch something that'll be back in six months.