There are a few major risks if a Delray Beach animal chews through an electrical wire, the major one occurs when a wire is chewed through and then the short-circuited wire touches either a wooden beam is crossing or some of the house insulation, the wire can be very hot and if the material it touches is flammable then you have the recipe for a house fire. Fire departments around the country say that 95% of house fires that start in the roof destroyed the whole building mainly because the house is generally well alight before anyone even notices it is on fire.



Another risk that Florida animals chewing through wiring can cause are short-circuits, this can cause loss of power to part of the building until the wiring is fixed but just because you have lost power to part of the building doesn't mean it is rodent or even wild animal damage, if you talk to any electrician they will give you a checklist to go through to try and determine what has happened and most of these professionals say that less than 20% of short-circuits are caused by animal damage.

There is an urban myth out there that Delray Beach rats in particular like to chew on the plastic coating on most modern electrical wiring, there is actually zero evidence to support this myth but it has been around for as long as humans have used electrical wiring, according to the myth rats just love to chew on electrical wiring, they don't but they will chew on anything including electrical wiring.

Probably small Florida rodents and other small animals do most of their damage to electrical wiring when they want to get from room A to room B, they don't use doors like we do, they find something going from one room to the other generally through the wall or the roof and they then set about making the hole big enough for them to fit through. In the process if it is electrical cable going through that hole they will most likely damage the insulation on the wiring usually with one of two effects, the first one will be a short circuit and a second one will be a short circuit with the animal being electrocuted in the process.

Electrical wires that are bitten right through rarely pose a fire danger but of course they will cause power outage. If however a wire is short-circuited then the fire hazard is very real and to be honest the animal has no idea what it's doing so you probably have a 50-50 chance that it will either stop power to part of the building or set fire to it.

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