Ten seconds before the 12KV line broke and fell sparking and arcing
onto the street, I'd walked under it without even being aware it, and
two more 12KV lines, were lurking overhead. Had I started my walk
home from my oldest's place down the street a few seconds later
I probably would have been what all the neighbors came out to see
instead of the sparking arcing wire in the street burning a hole
in the asphalt.

When the fire department showed up I took off - to buy a lottery
ticket or two - certain that my luck had to be a the highest it
has been for the last 10 or more years. JackPot is at 95mil
tonite and probably will go over 100 mil by tomorrow nite.
I feel a MAJOR NEENER coming on - EVERYTHING in the Festool
Catalogue, couple of Felder machines, a Stubby lathe, Aggazzini
bandsaw, Shop Bottus Maximus and a shop just a tad smaller
than Tom Plamann's. Even if I don't win anything I'm still
one lucky sob.

Note to all of you - when a 12KV line is arcing on the groung -
stay back AT LEAST 60 FEET. 'Lectricity can travel in the ground
in roots, sewer lines etc. that far and come up just about anywhere
- so said two firemen on scene.

charlie b

charlieb wrote:
Ten seconds before the 12KV line broke and fell sparking and arcing
onto the street, I'd walked under it without even being aware it, and
two more 12KV lines, were lurking overhead.
snip

12KV is quite common.

Be aware 33Kv and 69KV are not uncommon distribution voltages
depending on area.

Running overhead down the main drag of a suburban community were 345KV
lines.

Best thing you can do is be alert to the fact high voltage
distribution lines are out there.

Lew

"charlieb" wrote in message
...
Ten seconds before the 12KV line broke and fell sparking and arcing
onto the street, I'd walked under it without even being aware it, and
two more 12KV lines, were lurking overhead. Had I started my walk
home from my oldest's place down the street a few seconds later
I probably would have been what all the neighbors came out to see
instead of the sparking arcing wire in the street burning a hole
in the asphalt.

Kinda wild isn't it. That happen where I worked about 24 years ago. I
worked at a car dealership and a freight truck backed up to the loading
dock. There were 2 power poles immediately next to that drive and the drive
opened out on a busy street near a busy intersection. The trailer bumped
the pole, the old cable connecting the transformers touched each other and
burned causing the cable to drop and arch to the ground causing the next
cable on the next pole to do the same until the power cables had dropped
completely around 1/2 the building and through 2 intersections.

I recall in the dawn hours how the outside of the building flashed when each
cable burned through and then hitting the ground. The sound was a
tremendous bussing sound as it started at the far back side of the building
and made the "L" and came up to the opposite corner of the shop. We all
stood there watching as the noise and light came in our direction. Pretty
scary.

charlieb wrote:
| Ten seconds before the 12KV line broke and fell sparking and arcing
| onto the street, I'd walked under it without even being aware it,
| and two more 12KV lines, were lurking overhead. Had I started my
| walk home from my oldest's place down the street a few seconds later
| I probably would have been what all the neighbors came out to see
| instead of the sparking arcing wire in the street burning a hole
| in the asphalt.
|
| When the fire department showed up I took off - to buy a lottery
| ticket or two - certain that my luck had to be a the highest it
| has been for the last 10 or more years. JackPot is at 95mil
| tonite and probably will go over 100 mil by tomorrow nite.
| I feel a MAJOR NEENER coming on - EVERYTHING in the Festool
| Catalogue, couple of Felder machines, a Stubby lathe, Aggazzini
| bandsaw, Shop Bottus Maximus and a shop just a tad smaller
| than Tom Plamann's. Even if I don't win anything I'm still
| one lucky sob.

Might as well not have bought the ticket. Sounds to me as though you
might have used up all the luck in one go.

Talk about being in the wrong place at the right time!

Glad you're OK.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

On May 8, 12:27 am, charlieb wrote:
[snipped scary story]

Note to all of you - when a 12KV line is arcing on the groung -
stay back AT LEAST 60 FEET. 'Lectricity can travel in the ground
in roots, sewer lines etc. that far and come up just about anywhere
- so said two firemen on scene.

Those smoke-eaters have a bit of a distorted view, but caution may be
embellished to everyone's advantage.

I have seen, with my own eyes, what can happen when a human bag of
saline solution gets in the way of a ****load of voltages.
An electrician backed into a cabinet which normally holds an ACB (Air
Circuit Breaker), basically a switch where 3 massive bars slam into 3
contacts under the power of 300 PSI of air. This particular one
(Boiler feedpump) was rated at 23KV at 3000 amps. About the size of a
large kitchen pantry. They wheel them out for maintainance and you can
see the three bus bars, carrying full power from Station Service.
Those bars are supposed to be isolated from the supply when serviced.
This fellow backed into the cabinet and (they theorised) made contact
with a pair of pliers sticking out from his back pocket.
The steel toes from his work boots were blobs of metal, stuck to the
floor, which looked like splatter from an arc welder. Pieces of
uniform everywhere... and a lot of ash and slime with a scattering of
charred bones...and then that very bad smell.

It didn't happen on my watch, but I knew the guy who signed off on the
protection/safety certificate without checking if the circuit had been
isolated.
It's hard to tell which family suffered more after that.

And every farking summer, some farking idiot will hit powerlines with
his aluminum ladder.

r----who didn't need this walk down memeory lane this morning.

On May 8, 12:27 am, charlieb wrote:
Ten seconds before the 12KV line broke and fell sparking and arcing
onto the street, I'd walked under it without even being aware it, and
two more 12KV lines, were lurking overhead. Had I started my walk
home from my oldest's place down the street a few seconds later
I probably would have been what all the neighbors came out to see
instead of the sparking arcing wire in the street burning a hole
in the asphalt.

When the fire department showed up I took off - to buy a lottery
ticket or two - certain that my luck had to be a the highest it
has been for the last 10 or more years. JackPot is at 95mil
tonite and probably will go over 100 mil by tomorrow nite.
I feel a MAJOR NEENER coming on - EVERYTHING in the Festool
Catalogue, couple of Felder machines, a Stubby lathe, Aggazzini
bandsaw, Shop Bottus Maximus and a shop just a tad smaller
than Tom Plamann's. Even if I don't win anything I'm still
one lucky sob.

Note to all of you - when a 12KV line is arcing on the groung -
stay back AT LEAST 60 FEET. 'Lectricity can travel in the ground
in roots, sewer lines etc. that far and come up just about anywhere
- so said two firemen on scene.

charlie b

You're a lucky man, charlieb.

Leon wrote:

I recall in the dawn hours how the outside of the building flashed when each
cable burned through and then hitting the ground.**The*sound*was*a
tremendous bussing sound as it started at the far**back*side*of*the*building
and made the "L" and came up to the opposite corner of the shop.**We*all
stood there watching as the noise and light came in our direction.**Pretty
scary.

Reminds me of the time I was driving through a thunderstorm and lightning hit
the hood. It left a burned spot. Talk about blind - good thing it was a
deserted straight road :-). I got home and carefully jumped out so I
wouldn't be touching the car and the ground at the same time. Wasn't really
necessary, as I found out when I tossed a chain over the car to ground it -
but it was the only way I was going to get out of that car!

Or the friend who was working on some radio equipment and got shocked such
that he couldn't let go. He pulled the gear right off the bench to unplug it
because he said he could feel his heart start fibrillating.

Electricity is both wonderful and dreadful - depends on what you're doing :-).

--
It's turtles, all the way down

Robatoy wrote:

| Those smoke-eaters have a bit of a distorted view, but caution may
| be embellished to everyone's advantage.

I wasn't ever much of a smoke-eater, but was once sent back to the
engine to get a fire axe and "make a door" from one burning room to
another. We'd been told that the meter had been pulled (no power to
building) and the captain pointed to where he wanted the passage. No
dilly-dallying on my part - I swung the axe through the wall but
couldn't pull it back. Seems I'd managed to weld the axe head to the
innards of a (live) breaker box. Hardly strange that after thirty
years I still feel a particular fondness for fiberglass handles...

A couple of years later at an apartment file yours truly
(ex-paratrooper but still afraid of heghts) was sent to the basement
to do something - I can't remember what - and had gotten to about the
middle of the floor when I realized the basement lights were all on
and that the clothes driers were all sitting in more than knee-deep
water with detergent boxes floating all around. Water was still
pouring into the basement from hoses upstairs as I (ever so
carefully!) turned around and made haste slowly back to the stairs
hoping that my boots wouldn't leak and that I'd get to the stairs
before the water got deeper than my boot tops.

This kind of stuff does tend to give one a distorted view.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

A few years back a friend was running a shrimp boat
and they took a lightning strike on the main
radio antenna.

It blew the VHF radio completely out of
the wheelhouse through the windshield.

There was a few pair of shorts that needed
to be replaced that day.

Larry Blanchard wrote:



Or the friend who was working on some radio equipment and got shocked such
that he couldn't let go. He pulled the gear right off the bench to unplug it
because he said he could feel his heart start fibrillating.

Electricity is both wonderful and dreadful - depends on what you're doing :-).

Pat Barber wrote:
A few years back a friend was running a shrimp boat
and they took a lightning strike on the main
radio antenna.

It blew the VHF radio completely out of
the wheelhouse through the windshield.

There was a few pair of shorts that needed
to be replaced that day.

I call that a lucky shrimp boat crew.

Rather than just taking out the radio, that strike could just as
easily have holed the boat.

Lew

On Wed, 09 May 2007 16:30:29 GMT, Lew Hodgett
wrote:

Pat Barber wrote:
A few years back a friend was running a shrimp boat
and they took a lightning strike on the main
radio antenna.

It blew the VHF radio completely out of
the wheelhouse through the windshield.

There was a few pair of shorts that needed
to be replaced that day.

I call that a lucky shrimp boat crew.

Rather than just taking out the radio, that strike could just as
easily have holed the boat.

Lew

So, do boats benefit from lightning rods? Seems like the hazard for
boats in storms is pretty high.


+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 09 May 2007 16:30:29 GMT, Lew Hodgett
wrote:

Pat Barber wrote:
A few years back a friend was running a shrimp boat
and they took a lightning strike on the main
radio antenna.

It blew the VHF radio completely out of
the wheelhouse through the windshield.

There was a few pair of shorts that needed
to be replaced that day.

I call that a lucky shrimp boat crew.

Rather than just taking out the radio, that strike could just as
easily have holed the boat.

Lew

So, do boats benefit from lightning rods? Seems like the hazard for
boats in storms is pretty high.

depends upon who you ask. some say they attract hits, causing further
damage, some say they protect in a cone shaped area, so for powerboats, it
has to be pretty high up. sailboats have a builtin lightning rod


+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

regards,
charlie
cave creek, az

On May 10, 11:50 am, "charlie"
wrote:


[snip]sailboats have a builtin lightning rod


Quite a few ultra-whacka-doodle fundies didn't think it was right to
have a lightning rod on a church steeple.
Some of them came around to a different way of thinking when it
started to cost them money to keep rebuilding.
A whacky bunch, really.

I don't think lightning is an issue of faith. It's pretty well been
demonstrated that if it is a religious thing, it's pretty random.
Quite few golfers get hit...in which I see the (5-) irony.