| accordepicenter |
04-20-2009 07:30 PM |
Oh man, that was close...
Some of you guys know i work for the local power company as a lineman, well today was one hell of a day... we are on this 1 street that we are completely re wiring, putting up new primary wire next to live 4800v, and when 1 guy was in the bucket trying to tie the new wire to the insulator, his boom pushed 1 4800v phase into the other 4800v phase, creating about a 15ft ball of fire as the wires came together. Fortunatley he was fine, but it had knocked out power for miles, blowing fuses at a bank of transformers on a pole that lower the voltage from 13200v to 4800v... so our other crew had gone down the street, to re-fuse and close the switches for the transformer bank. They set up, put the new fuses for the cut-outs with a stick, then gets ready to close the switches. Only 2 of the 3 fuses had blown, so he closed one with the stick, and closed the other with the stick, and one transformer began to hum loudly, and he knew somthing was wrong, so he tried to boom away from it as fast as he could, as he is only about 4 ft away from it, but about 2 sec after he closed the switch, there was a loud KAPOWWWWWW, very loud, basically like a bomb going off, because 1 of the transformers blew its lid off in a loud large firey oil filled blast. Flames shot at least 30 ft in the air out of the top of it, engulfing the bucket and my co worker in flames and hot oil. As soon as soon as we saw this, it was like our hearts stopped... we hurried down where they were, and somehow he was ok, not burned, but covered in burnt oil, as was the truck, boom, bossman on the ground (lol) as well as everything else within a 45ft radius around the pole... Im thankful nobody got hurt today, but it just reminds you how accidents and close calls can happen, and never take shortcuts (okay, at least in this line of work). Nobody expected the transformer protected by the fuses would have failed like this... I would have posted this in GD but there is going to be an investigation so i didnt want to give many specifics. Sorry if its long or confusing
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