Part power call

[PA BEN]

Went to a part power call, it was a new service about a year old. It was at a duplex. The transformer fed a mobile home and the duplex. At the transformer and weather heads we used side by squeeze on connectors. The duplex had 120 volts; the mobile home had 120/240 volts. The service didn’t go through any trees. I checked at the weather head still 120 volts. As I walked the service to the pole and saw something funny with the insulation about mid span. I set up my bucket at that spot to look. The top of the wire had a clean cut through it that made contact with the neutral and burned one conductor open. What the hell did that I thought. I looked down and leaning on the mobile homes fence was a 10 ft. wooden tree trimmer with a hole burned in the jaws. The homeowner was in his back yard, so I asked if the tree trimmers were his? He said yes, “why do you ask”? I showed him the jaws and asked how did that happen? He hollered his 10 year olds name. The kid came around the corner of the house where he had been watching me work. The kid started crying and we knew it was him. I gave him the talk about electricity but I didn’t really need to because of the burn in the jaws of the trimmer gave him a picture worth more then a thousand words.