wrote in message
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You see a lot of 3 wire transmission lines across the countryside. The
lines are spaced about a meter apart and are supported by relatively
close-to-the-ground wooden poles which aren't dissimilar to telegraph poles
in appearance. You could reach them with a fishing rod they're that low in
some places. I saw some hapless tree surgeon lop off a branch once that
landed across two of these wires. Two little fires ignited at the contact
points. Didn't look anything special at first. I expected an upstream
breaker somewhere to activate and shut off the current, but that didn't
happen. The fires grew rapidly and within one minute at the most there was
the most *enormous* flash and ***BANG*** and everything then fell earily
silent. It was one of the most spectacular things I've ever witnessed.
Turned out the power to a couple of hundred thousand homes had been lost as
a result. Would this have been one of your 33,000V lines? The homes
affected were as far away as 35 miles from the incident, btw.

Almost certainly 11kV on lines as you describe

AWEM