July 13, 2005 South Carolina Lineman Killed by Generator Back Feed Victim Helping Restore Power in Alabama
Sumter Electric Cooperative (SECO) officials report that a South Carolina lineman helping to restore power in Alabama after the damage caused by Hurricane Dennis was killed late Tuesday, reportedly by an improperly installed customer generator.
According to SECO Director of Public Affairs Barry Bowman, the lineman was helping to restore power lost during Hurricane Dennis to customers in Alabama. The report Bowman received indicated the lineman was working on a power line that was supposed to be dead. It was not.
Not as bad, he wasn’t killed but still severely shocked; Polk County, Fl Wednesday, September 2, 2009 10:12 AM EDT http://www.polkcountydemocrat.com/articles/2009/09/02/news/local/doc4a9dade2d4283632518688.txt A Bartow electric department employee escaped a brush with death Monday night when a downed line he was repairing became energized by a homeowner’s generator.
Eddie Watson, an apprentice lineman, was grasping a line while wearing leather gloves as he worked to repair a line that was brought down by a falling tree in Monday night’s fierce thunderstorm.
When a homeowner whose house was served by the line started up a generator, it sent a surge of power through the line, Interim Electric Dir. Eschol Radford said.
The electricity went through a transformer, stepping up the voltage from 110 volts generated by the generator to 7,200 volts, the transmission voltage. Usually, the transformer does just the opposite, stepping down voltage from 7,200 to 110 volts for service lines to homes.
“He was lucky,” Radford said of Watson.
“Fortunately, he had a young guy, Scott Harrison, a lineman helper, working with him. Scott knocked him off the line and probably saved his life.”
Watson was rushed by ambulance to Lakeland Regional Medical Center, then transferred to the Tampa General Hospital burn center “to keep an eye on him overnight.
“Fortunately, he only had a couple of burns on his hands; he was really lucky,” Radford said.
Watson was sent home on Tuesday, “and is doing really well.”
The accident happened at Harney Road and Holly Lane in Alturas at about 9:30 p.m. Monday.
Safety procedures call for linemen to work every line as if it were energized, which includes the wearing of heavy rubber gloves, Radford said.
“He took a shortcut and got caught; we’ve all done it. He wanted to get the power restored as fast as possible.”
Watson has been employed by the city for about 20 years, half that time with the electric department, Radford said.
Harrison has been with the city three or four years.
Homeowners who use a generator to restore household power during an outage should turn off the main breaker to their home to prevent this type of accident, Radford said.
�Tragically, the line this technician was working on was not dead,� said Bowman, �The line he was trying to repair had been re-energized by a customer who had improperly hooked up a generator and created a back feed of electricity from the generator into the supposedly dead line. The death of a lineman who was there to help the victims of Hurricane Dennis was the horrible result.�
Bowman noted that the lineman�s name was not immediately released, but he was from South Carolina and worked for Pike Electric, Inc. in North Carolina.
Alabama authorities are looking for the person responsible and indicate that charges are pending.
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