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Near miss on Maui

I've resently transfered here to MECO (Maui Electric Co.) from Seattle CityLight. I topped out of a four year program a year ago to the month, after grunting for four years at the same Co. Anyway, our crew was on the island of Lana'i for a week of work. Our job basically consisted of an over-head to underground cut-over for a residential service feed. According to our prints and instructions we were to identify the cable that would feed two Submersable transformers, which we did according to the existing tagging and print layout. We parked both ends, tested for dead and grounded the cable. Working out of a 4'x3'x2' hand-hole my partner tested the the elbow connection test-point with an analog voltage test meter (which was our near fatal mistake). I'm not up on the theory of it all, but I guess the test point on the elbow is a capacitive charged voltage which can't be read with an analog voltage tester or atleast the one we were using. Anyway, after testing for dead and not getting a reading we were certain we had the right cable. My partner, working in the hole, didn't have his high-voltage gloves readily handy and asked me to pull the elbow to SP connection apart with mine. I bent over, reached into the hole and pulled apart the connections, simultaneously watching 7200 volts go to ground. It makes for a hell sound and light display less than two feet from your face. Fortunatly, niether of us was physically injured. Aside from the mistagging and outdated print, we should have never been using that or any other analog voltage tester to test an elbow TP. Thank goodness I was wearing my HV gloves. If anyone has any questions or comments they would like to make regarding this incedent or anything else, please feel free to contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.