The whole building was full of snafus. Original wiring was knob&tube, but someone had "remodeled" and tacked romex onto it to drop to the outlets, leaving ground detached. Then along came the Section-8 people and their "inspections", which consisted of plugging in one of those three-LED outlet testers to verify proper wiring. Well some landlord/handyman or another figured out he could trick the testers by tying the ground prong to neutral... Problem was, in my kitchen, the first guy, the romex-tied-to-the-k&t guy, got neutral/hot reversed, so the second guy actually tied the ground prong to hot. Imagine my surprise when I slid the microwave over one day to clean under it, and the side came in contact with the kitchen sink...

When I moved in, the local power company told me on the phone, "that apartment hasn't had power in over a year, so we can't hook it back up until we inspect it." I said "hell no. Once you inspect it, you'll NEVER hook it up again."

I ended up giving the phone to the landlord, who disappeared into his apartment (across the hall) for about 10 minutes. I have no idea what he said, but two days later I came home and my power was on.

Come to think of it, I never got a bill either, so the landlord may very well have turned it on himself.

Anyway...

With the entire apartment on a single 15A fuse, that was more often than one would hope. Of course, when I moved in, the landlord had a 30A fuse in the hole...

paredown, no, the place never burned to the ground. It's still standing, although it is "condemned". I have no idea if it's been rewired or not. The real estate listing says it has circuit breakers, so I guess SOMETHING has been done, but the service entrance cable is still the same old one.