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  1. #1

    Default Lineman Survives Shock from 7,200-Volt Power Line Monday

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    Polk County, Fl
    Wednesday, September 2, 2009 10:12 AM EDT
    http://www.polkcountydemocrat.com/ar...3632518688.txt
    A Bartow electric department employee escaped a brush with death Monday night when a downed line he was repairing became energized by a homeowner’s generator.

    Eddie Watson, an apprentice lineman, was grasping a line while wearing leather gloves as he worked to repair a line that was brought down by a falling tree in Monday night’s fierce thunderstorm.

    When a homeowner whose house was served by the line started up a generator, it sent a surge of power through the line, Interim Electric Dir. Eschol Radford said.

    The electricity went through a transformer, stepping up the voltage from 110 volts generated by the generator to 7,200 volts, the transmission voltage. Usually, the transformer does just the opposite, stepping down voltage from 7,200 to 110 volts for service lines to homes.

    “He was lucky,” Radford said of Watson.

    “Fortunately, he had a young guy, Scott Harrison, a lineman helper, working with him. Scott knocked him off the line and probably saved his life.”

    Watson was rushed by ambulance to Lakeland Regional Medical Center, then transferred to the Tampa General Hospital burn center “to keep an eye on him overnight.

    “Fortunately, he only had a couple of burns on his hands; he was really lucky,” Radford said.

    Watson was sent home on Tuesday, “and is doing really well.”

    The accident happened at Harney Road and Holly Lane in Alturas at about 9:30 p.m. Monday.

    Safety procedures call for linemen to work every line as if it were energized, which includes the wearing of heavy rubber gloves, Radford said.

    “He took a shortcut and got caught; we’ve all done it. He wanted to get the power restored as fast as possible.”

    Watson has been employed by the city for about 20 years, half that time with the electric department, Radford said.

    Harrison has been with the city three or four years.

    Homeowners who use a generator to restore household power during an outage should turn off the main breaker to their home to prevent this type of accident, Radford said.

  2. #2

    Default enough

    "He wanted to get the power restored as fast as possible.”...this stupid thinking gets more people hurt and or killed ..these days it's about yourself,your crew,being safe,going home to the loved ones...f-k getting it done fast for the customer...

  3. #3

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by mx-5 View Post
    "He wanted to get the power restored as fast as possible.”...this stupid thinking gets more people hurt and or killed ..these days it's about yourself,your crew,being safe,going home to the loved ones...f-k getting it done fast for the customer...
    That just either what the newpaper said or what he said to the newspaper so he didnt feel like dumbass for not wearing the right gear. he was just being dumb learn from his mistakes!

  4. Default Accident

    Who is this Radford guy. He should shut up untill he know what he is talking about. "The customers should turn off the main when using a generator." Really! That all their is to it? I think he was misquoted. No one could be this stupid.

  5. #5

    Default

    Besides talking about generators, Radford should have said that the lineman should have tested for the absence of voltage and grounded the line BEFORE working on it.

  6. #6

    Default

    This guy did something that I have seen done by a lot of people through the years, he probably had the line grounded at the source or at least I hope so, and he probably never thought about the unknown source ie the generator, it's a small town he had probably been there before, knew where the source or fuse pole was and was'nt thinking about an alternate source on the downed line beyond his grounds, not saying it's right just saying that is probably what happened, let's not forget that this guy is an apprentice not a lineman, let's be thankful that he is o.k. and that he learned a valuable lesson and let's hope that we all will think about this the next time we go to a downed wire call, grounds at the power company's source is not enough this day and age.

  7. #7

    Default

    If you are ever making decisions related to life or death, why would you ever take a chance that there is no generator anywhere? Whether you have been there before or not.....

    You can't always hear the generator, so saying that you would listen for the noise is B.S. Besides, if you are working, and all of a sudden you do hear it, you're too late.

    Apprentice or not, grounds are basic knowledge.

  8. #8

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by LINCRW View Post
    If you are ever making decisions related to life or death, why would you ever take a chance that there is no generator anywhere? Whether you have been there before or not.....

    You can't always hear the generator, so saying that you would listen for the noise is B.S. Besides, if you are working, and all of a sudden you do hear it, you're too late.

    Apprentice or not, grounds are basic knowledge.
    I hear what you are saying LINCRW and agree, all I was trying to say is a lot of good hands will do things ie shortcuts that you would never think they would do, if a lot of the older hands on this site would admit it I'll betcha they would tell you that they have worked on downed lines with grounds at the fuse pole and none anywhere else before, and all I was saying is that that is not enough anymore and hoping that if anything good could come out of this besides him being o.k was that everybody would think about this the next time they were in a similar situation.

  9. Default

    Why was there no journeyman with him? An apprentice doing storm repair with a helper? Apparently no protection from backfeed. It is a legal requirement here to have an automatic switch to protect from backfeed. That is not to say some people try to get around this and becoming more dangerous with the cheap portable generators out there now. This is only a requirment for automatic start generators as yet.

  10. #10

    Default

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lineman North Florida View Post
    I hear what you are saying LINCRW and agree, all I was trying to say is a lot of good hands will do things ie shortcuts that you would never think they would do, if a lot of the older hands on this site would admit it I'll betcha they would tell you that they have worked on downed lines with grounds at the fuse pole and none anywhere else before, and all I was saying is that that is not enough anymore and hoping that if anything good could come out of this besides him being o.k was that everybody would think about this the next time they were in a similar situation.
    You are absolutely correct. Thanks for trying to raise the awareness of our co-workers.

    I too hope some good will come from this.

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