Check the food first, then the power: the breaker, the outlet (garage and kitchen GFCI outlets often trip) and the display. Many fridges show an outage alert or flash their lights while they self-check, and they take hours to cool back down. If it has power and is still warm after several hours, a control board, relay or compressor part may have failed.
Lufkin knows outages
During the winter ice storm, when ERCOT ordered rolling blackouts, Oncor's outage map showed more than 13,000 Angelina County customers without power at one point and about 16,000 at another. After Tropical Storm Beryl in July 2024, nearly 3,000 Oncor customers in the county were still waiting the next night. Even ordinary thunderstorms knock out a few hundred homes at a time. Every one of those outages means fridges sitting warm and then restarting all at once.
Rather have a technician look at it? See Lufkin refrigerator repair.
While the power is out
- Keep the doors shut. A closed fridge keeps food safe for up to about 4 hours. A full freezer holds about 48 hours, a half-full one about 24 (USDA, via FoodSafety.gov).
- Check Oncor's outage map for an estimated restoration time, so you know whether to move food to coolers.
- If it's going to be longer than the fridge can hold, move milk, meat and medicine to a cooler with ice.
When the power comes back
- Check the breaker and the outlet. A tripped breaker or GFCI outlet is the most common reason a fridge stays dead after an outage. Garage outlets are usually GFCI.
- Read the display. Whirlpool shows "PO" if the freezer got to 18°F or warmer. Samsung flashes all its icons while it runs a self-diagnostic, which is normal, and 88 88 can mean the power dropped while it was starting up. Write down any code.
- Check it isn't set to off or demo. On a Samsung, OF OF means Cooling Off mode.
- Give it time. A warm fridge takes hours to pull back down (LG allows 24–48 hours after a full defrost). But you should feel cold air and hear it running within the first hour.
Signs it really is broken
- No lights, no sound, and the breaker and outlet are fine.
- Lights and display work, but there's no cooling after several hours.
- A click every few minutes and a hum, but it never starts. That's often a start relay or the compressor.
- A burning smell. Unplug it and leave it unplugged.
Brownouts, and the surge when power returns, can damage control boards and relays. That's a repair, and it usually isn't the whole fridge.
Throwing out food
Perishables (milk, meat, leftovers) that sat at 40°F or above for more than 2 hours should be thrown out. Never taste food to decide. Frozen food that still has ice crystals, or is at 40°F or below, can be refrozen. Our food safety guide has the details.
When to call now
- It has power but is still warm after several hours
- It clicks and hums but never starts
- You smell burning
See emergency refrigerator repair for what to do in the next hour.
Call (936) 304-3264What happens when you call
Tell us the brand and what it's doing. A technician comes out, finds the fault and gives you the price before any work starts, and you decide. More in how a repair visit works.
Sources
- FoodSafety.gov: food safety during a power outage
- Whirlpool: PO error code
- Samsung: refrigerator error codes
- Lufkin Daily News: Beryl leaves Angelina County in cleanup mode
- Lufkin Daily News: Oncor reports 13,000 still without power