Sounds like a loose connection. Turn off the breaker and check the connection on all the receptacles on the circuit. You will probably find one of them with a melted connection. If the wires are plugged into the holes in the back of the receptacles they should be moved to the screws. Those plug in back stab connections have been known to cause this exact problem.

Have you inspected and re-tested the iron on another circuit?

If the iron is fried, that seriously brings into question whether the breaker is bad, but I'd still follow joed's suggesting to look for a melted and/or loose connection.

That is, the breaker may have failed to trip when a faulty iron shorted which then caused something else along the circuit to melt down.

This is certainly a situation that needs to be diagnosed and not ignored.

To add to the original post, the iron fell on the floor a few weeks ago and it's ready to fall apart. I wonder if it created a short. But after my son pulled the plug he took the iron into the laundry room (different circuit) and the iron worked fine for the short time he used it. My question for Joed is: are you talking about checking the outlet where the iron was first plugged in? I'm not sure what you're talking about with the back stab connections. I know barely anything about elec wiring, not even sure what a melted connection would look like. Thanks.

"...Should I do anything immediately..."

Yes. Do whatever you must to get rid of the FPE panel. It is a fire waiting (perhaps not long) to happen.

Given the level of paranoia I sometimes see in these forums, I'm very surprised and slightly shocked that there hasn't been a more urgent response to this.

Total blackouts without tripped breakers are a sure sign of extreme danger. At the very least, something is extremely loose and high-resistance (read: likely to be hot). At a higher level of concern, a dead short pulled the voltage low enough to turn the lights off (or dim them far enough that you thought they were off). 100% voltage drop is NEVER a good thing, and is an extreme fire danger unless we're talking about a circuit that's fifteen and a half miles long.

Bad smells are a bad sign, for reasons I shouldn't have to explain.

Something got extremely hot. Something probably melted. Something that is supposed to be insulated is no longer so, and it's still live - "protected" by a circuit breaker that obviously never protected it to begin with.

Yes. Your situation DOES require immediate attention. Turn off the circuit breaker and don't turn it back on again until you find whatever melted and replace it. Once you've turned the breaker off, verify that the circuit is, in fact, off (I've had an FPE breaker fail to open the circuit even manually) before proceeding.

If the "100% voltage drop" theory came true, then the damaged "something" may very well be the entire length of cable from the panel on to the rest of the circuit.

I don't think there's a person on this forum who will recommend that you continue to use a circuit wired with cable that has already melted once.

Looking for paranoia? This sounds like a distinct possibility of BOTH a bad breaker (possibly an entire bad panel if it is FPE) AND a bad circuit (possibly now in worse condition that before). You are lucky the house didn't burn down in the first event. You are lucky someone was awake in case it did start a fire.

You could shut off that circuit until it is repaired. But with FPE, I would not trust even that. You should move out of the house (move in with other family, or friends, or in a motel for a week or so) until a licensed electrician can make complete repairs, including replacing the panel and the damaged circuit. If you have young children, you might even be criminally liable for keeping them in a hazardous place.

"If you have young children, you might even be criminally liable for keeping them in a hazardous place."

I'm all for making a point and making it with a sense of urgency in a situation perceived to be dangerous.

But this is OTT, IMO. Can you cite any instance of a parent being convicted criminally because s/he didn't move the family to a motel after experiencing an electrical incident where the some lights went out? Or anything remotely similar to this set of facts?

If not, can we stick to electrical matters and avoid dispensing very dubious legal advice?

Since this episode, I tested all the outlets which I believe are supplied by this breaker, including the outlet that the iron was plugged into, with a small light. The light worked at each outlet. The ceiling lights sharing the circuit also work fine. If something melted would I have the ability to operate all the above with no problems? The circuit breaker at the box is actually two breaker switches that are attached together by a bar and each switch says 30. Does this mean that there's 60 amps of power?

Oops, it's not on the double 30, its on a single 20 amp circuit. But the breaker did not trip.

If something melted would I have the ability to operate all the above with no problems?

Yes, that is entirely possible.

There could be a very tenuous (and possibly uninsulated) contact somewhere that's still capable of conducting enough power to illuminate a "small light" but, if subjected to a much higher power demand, would arc dangerously.

(To put this in perspective, a 60-watt light bulb draws less than 3% of the capacity of a 20-amp circuit. It's like test driving your car at two miles per hour.)

Furthermore, you still don't know whether that breaker is defective and that remains a very troublesome issue, IMHO.

It's also possible for some insulation to melt off somewhere, off a wire that isn't touching anything anyway, thereby not causing an immediate short. But the wire is still not insulated after, and could still become a future problem.

If the recessed lights were fluorescent it wouldn't take amywhere near a 100% voltage drop to blank them out.

They're not flourecent. My service is 125 amp. Of course, now I have to start saving for an upgrade to get out of the federal pacific box. When I call an electrician, what should I be asking? Is it necessary to have the replacement box be any larger than 125 amp? And what kind of expense what I be looking at? I live in upstate new york (near Binghamton). Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Your service is more likely 100 amp, not 125 amp. (Don't confuse the actual service capacity supplied at your meter with the rating of the main panel. If, for example, you replaced your 125 amp main panel with a 150 amp box, it wouldn't increase the available power.)

Because that's a fairly small service these days (all but very small new houses typically come with 200-amp service now), I'd ask for two two estimates: (1) main panel replacement for a 100 amp service and (2) a panel replacement with upgrade to 200 amp service.

Whether or not you're on the verge of needing a service upgrade depends on your existing load demands as well as possible future plans. (Could there be an addition in your future? Might you put in a spa some day?) But most importantly, it depends upon whether you use electric for cooking, hot water, clothes dryer and/or any significant amount of heat, as with heat pumps or baseboard). If you use all gas for these functions, replacing the present 100-amp service map be perfectly adequate.

Even if you decide not to upgrade the service, it'd at least be interesting to compare the cost estimates.

Parts and labor to replace just the main panel? Oh, probably somewhere in the range of $1000-1500, depending on access and whether or not ancillary code-related issues have to be taken care of. I'm guessing that Binghamton would be somewhere in the middle in terms of national prices (e.g., cheaper than a coast city like New York, Boston, LA or San Fransico but more expensive than a small city in the middle of the prairie belt). Under a thousand would probably be a great bargain.

One of the east coast sparkies on this board may be able to tune that estimate, though. It's just a rough guess on my part.

Well, when I opened the panel door, the middle strip with assorted information said 125 amps, so I assumed that to be the case. I have an electric stove, gas dryer, gas water heater, gas furnace. No plans for an addition. Maybe central air someday. The house is a small ranch, maybe 1100 sq ft. Since I moved here, we added a dishwasher and garbage disposal where there was none, above ground pool, some low voltage outside lights, some additional lighting in the basement. The only thing I would add when I upgrade the service would be a seperate outlet for a clothes iron in the laundry area. And the only reason I'm contemplating the upgrade is due to the original post and issues with FPE box.