Andy
The incident that tripped the breaker could have caused damage to the lineside conductors that feed the panel, or any other conductor(s) in the panel. When reenergizing the said breaker, it may cause this situation to escalate into a catastrophic situation, which is a fault condition that can lead to an arcblast condition. The arcblast can develop very quickly into multiphase arcblast that has tremendous potential to cause property and bodily harm.
Try a
www.google.com search on this subject, and you will find plenty of info on it.
www.bussmann.com also has very good information on this subject.
Pierre
