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Near Miss With 7620

Hi, near miss with 7620 KVA, well the other day, we were completing a single phase conversion, I had layed out the phase on lay out arms, this job had a lot of taps on it, so when I came to a pole with a tap on it I gutted up the main phase and tied it up on the taps , well in the mean time we had made the new wire hot and bumped all transformers and taps over on the new line and killed out the old line, I was in the process of letting down the old line, when suddenly I saw a flash a couple of spans away, the flash came from a pole that had a tap on it, then I saw the tap fall to the ground, so I went up on that pole and the rubber gut was still on the main wire in such a way that it could not come in contact with the hot tap, as I looked closer to the rubber gut I notice it had blew a hole in the rubber gut, at that spot the old line came in contact with the hot tap, I'm not sure weather the rubber gut had a pin hole in it or while I was letting down the wire wore a hole in the gut. I think that the gut failed me, becuase if it had done it while letting wire down I would think that it would have had a bigger hole from rubbing thru in side the gut, but it just had a little hole where it failed. I have used this method servel times. I believe I won't anymore. The good thing is nobody was hurt. A couple of things that I feel could have prevented this, (1) let the wire down at the tap pole, and if possible kill the tap out before letting it down, (2) use lay out arm, when possible(3) inspect rubber guts a little closer. If any comments, please post, this is how we learn, thanks. Chip