Technical Alternator Wiring Fire, What Now?

I'm sorry, I should have elaborated on what a dead short is. When a switch is on, it is a connection as if the switch isn't there and yes a short could cause that effect as a short in wiring is when the current is not within the intended path. When it dead shorts, it grounds out and the current flow is unrestricted. In this case it could be on it's mount through the switch body, another grounded wire, the dash, or something similar. The connection to a grounded surface is what is considered a dead short as the circuit becomes terminated against a ground. This condition causes excessive heat build up that often leads to a fire. Wires melting from overload will often dead short as the insulation melts. Types of shorts in vehicle wiring could be dead short, open short, or connected to another circuit (short circuited). Shorts don't always cause failures. Sometimes a small portion of the electrical energy leaves the circuit it is intended to be in. These are the hardest to track down and find.

 

I really hate amp meters just for reasons like this. They carry a lot of load through them, and that load is run from the battery to the meter, and to generator or alternator. If anything happens to the amp meter it's going up in smoke or fire inside the dash, or under the dash.
When I was a young fella I worked at the local Cadillac dealer and an older Cadillac was towed in with wiring issues. I worked the minor repair line where we troubleshot electrical, and this had an ugly mess under the dash. Someone had added a stand alone amp meter to the lower dash and somehow it shorted internally. No fuse so it burned the wire all the way from alternator to amp meter, to battery. And of course the wire had been bundled with others under the dash, so they suffered the result of the wire melting also.
I ended up removing the burnt amp meter wire, cutting the loom open and one at a time replacing damaged wires that had bad insulation, and then wrapping the looms back up. I then added a volt meter since the customer wanted something more than a idiot light, and fused it with a 5 amp fuse to ensure there'd be no future fires.
The detail shop had a lot of cleanup to do to get rid of the awful burnt electrical wiring smell afterwards.