Author -

Line Down

I'm a troubleshooter for Ohio Edison. Got a call of no lights and a wire down. Met the other troubleman, on duty, there and we found a span of #4 acsr primary down. It was the middle phase of three. What appeared to happen was that the wire fell out of the quick/sleeve and tripped the recloser down stream. The other t-man went to the recloser and confirmed that it was tripped and then I cut the wire in the clear so that we could heat it up to the break to restore power to part of the customers until the crew arrived to restring the span. Crew was on the way and the power was restored to the break. I followed the three phase out to see how many more customers were effected by the outage. At the end of the three phase was a single-phase spur that fed off of the same phase that was down. There to my surprise was another span of primary down on the ground. It became evident that this span came down first and laid on the ground hot, thus burning the quick/sleeve apart. If we had not found that second wire down, the crew member gloving the primary at the first break would have picked up a dead fault with his pick-up jumper. It had all the makings of a serious accident. We are all grateful that it wasn't. Always look things over real good and don't be too anxious to get everyone back on, until you know that it safe to do so. Loop (easy does it)