My daughter called this morning with this problem.
All breakers appear fine and have been toggled to be sure.
There is no "main" breaker on the distribution box.
I figure the next step is to open the box but I don't think my son-in-law feels comfortable doing that. (Me either, but I've done it before.)
Ideas?
[UPDATE] Apparently there's an outage in the area and Com Ed is working on it. Sitting tight for now.

 

Even if it is a sub panel, there is usually means of disconnect, I would be very surprised if there were no means of disconnect at all?
Even if fitted remote or external.
Max.

 

My house has the main breaker outside near the service entrance. Inside, there is a sub-panel with all the breakers. This is code in my area so that fire fighters can shut off the juice to a house in an emergency.

 

The power company found the source of the local outage – the big ugly tree in my daughter's front yard. Some charring, possibly a lightning strike.

Power restored. Branches on the ground. "We don't pick up after ourselves." – Com Ed

 

Older house in a suburb South of Cleveland used to have that happen all the time with storms. There was one main box with a pair of big fuses and a few subpanels from "renovation" work. Lights on one leg of the main box worked and those on the other didn't. Light in drier worked (110V), but dryer (220V) didn't. I finally convinced the electrical company to check the wire at the pole. That was re-secured and everything worked. No problems since.

The power reduction was associated with storms, which apparently jiggled the wire just enough to interrupt the connection.

John

 

I helped my son-in-law clean up the branches this afternoon, and we found the point of contact. A ~1" branch was charred and nearly burnt through in one spot. It had scars that had healed over for about a foot on either side of the char, showing that this branch had been rubbing the feed to the house for a long time. It must have finally gotten through the insulation.

There are still some smaller branches on the same tree in contact with the wires, but the Com Ed guys weren't interested in doing anything more.