Dangers of high voltage lines,

Posted by NCWayne on February 22, 2007 at 17:43:53 from (205.188.117.14):

Hey guys, I had an experience this morning and wanted to take a minute to write and remind everyone of the dangers of overhead high voltage lines.... I got in a customers machine this morning to move it in order to work on it. The machine is a 320B CAT excavator with a 24" tall rock drill boom in place of the bucket. I'm always really careful when moving these things simply because of the length of the boom. In this case they had parked it, I measured after the fact, about 8 feet from a set of overhead power lines. Too close to begin with I know but that's another story. Long story short there were actually two sets of lines, and when I pulled up I noticed them but against a background of blue sky and tree limbs I didn't realize there were two sets. Before getting into the cab I looked and saw the lines in the field about 20 feet away and thought i had plenty of clearance to do whatever I needed to do. What I failed to do was to look straight up over my head and see the second set. So, when I started to move the machine I thought there was plenty of clearance, til I heard the pop and saw sparks. Fortunately I was turning with the tracks so I didn't hit them hard and being an excavator I was able to get away from them rather quickly using the swing. I got really lucky in that the lines I crossed were at the dead end of a 7000V line and according to the lineman only pushing about 3 amps that far out. BUT, the set further in the field was running at 44,000 volts and ALOT more amps. The machine kissed the lines when I turned the boom into them and fortunately tied the hot leg and neutral together so the machine could have, but didn',t become a path to the actual ground. Instead the current simply ran through the boom from one wire to the other. If it had gone all the way through the machine it could have been alot worse for the machine as wel as me. As it turned out no damage to me or the machine, and nothing wrong with the wires that two splices crimped over the burn marks couldn't fix. The main thing is there were at least a dozen people without power for nearly an hour and we'll get a bill for the repair. Moral of the story...Don't forget to look up and always, always be extreemly careful around overhead high voltage lines. I got lucky and lived, many people don't.....

Replies:

• General good advice Re: Dangers of high voltage l buickanddeere 07:08:44 02/24/07 (0)
• Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, supergrumpy 09:25:16 02/23/07 (0)
• Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, John S-B 05:47:05 02/23/07 (0)
• Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, Billy NY 21:23:28 02/22/07 (1)
  • Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, Gerald J. 07:46:27 02/23/07 (0)
• Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, huntingreen 20:30:46 02/22/07 (0)
• Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, Davis In SC 19:44:54 02/22/07 (0)
• Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, fixerupper 19:29:24 02/22/07 (0)
• Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, Rick Kr 18:48:03 02/22/07 (0)
• Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, Peabo 18:39:37 02/22/07 (1)
  • Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, RAB 23:08:54 02/22/07 (0)
• Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, Ken L. 18:12:26 02/22/07 (0)
• Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, bigjt 18:11:58 02/22/07 (2)
  • Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, charley hellickson 23:01:17 02/22/07 (1)
    • Re: Dangers of high voltage lines, Rexalot 23:26:20 02/22/07 (0)

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