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Car Hits Pad-Mount Transformer

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One evening around midnight, a troubleman receives a call on the radio. A car had run into a single-phase pad-mount transformer. The troubleman proceeds to the scene. When he arrives, he observes a couple of police cars, a drunk. It seems that the drunk had come around the curve in the residential area, lost control of the car and ran into the pad-mount, sending it 80 to 100 feet down the road and into one of the neighbors front yards. The troubleman gets out of the truck and looks at the damaged transformer. It’s leaking oil and has too much damage to be replaced. Next, the troubleman goes over to the pad to check out the damage to the primary and secondary conductors. He observes that the secondary conductors and the #2 solid copper ground wire are sticking up out of the opening in the pad, and they are all straight as an arrow, the result of having been stretched out at the end of the transformer before snapping off the secondary and case ground terminals. The troubleman takes a look at the primary conductors and notices that they don’t look too bad. Upon picking up and examining the elbow terminator on one of the primary cables, he notices that there is some dirt inside the elbow, down by the probe. The troubleman takes a clean cotton rag out of his back pocket, wraps it once around the pointing finger on his bare right hand, and sticks it into the elbow terminator to wipe the dirt out. When the troubleman opens his eyes, there are policemen standing around him and they are not interested in the drunk anymore. An ambulance is called, and the troubleman is taken to the hospital where he recovers from a minor burn. He’s back on the job within a couple of days, with no known complications. So, what did the troubleman learn? He learned to never make any assumptions about the status of a normally energized line or piece of equipment. He learned that even though experience may tell him that 99 out of 100 times, when a car runs over a pad-mount transformer, the primary "dip" fuse blows, he MUST take steps to verify the condition of a line or piece of equipment so that he will KNOW its condition. He also learned that failing to verify the status of a line or piece of equipment may result in a serious injury or a death.