Author -
Submitted By -GE Cutouts
A couple of years ago another lineman and I were called to a simple outage during a thunderstorm. The fuse had blown on a short tap coming off of a three phase line. It was a general electric cutout-fuse that had the tail visibly hanging out the bottom, but the fuse door did not fall open(which is very common here). I started to walk out the tap while Bob was going to attampt to re-fuse the cutout. Before he could pull it open, I found the phase on the ground due to the trees. I turned to tell Bob he was wasting his time when I noticed a woman sitting in her house watching T.V.. The fuse barrel was tracked all the way down and the line was hot on the ground. a couple of times before, I had picked up a downed wire to see what size it is before it was grounded or while it was in the process of being grounded. I don't do that anymore.