Posted by Mxslick "IMHO, there would be no excuse for such a thing. (POCO workers take note, I'm not condemming the practice by utilities, the circumstances are very different."
I sat across a desk from a job applicant once. He had some gnarly looking scars on his forarms. I asked him if it was electrical related. He then told me about how he and his buddy who died from it were servicing a transformer at our nearby naval base when a chief petty officer decided to cut the lock off and re energise the main, not knowing the circuit was still bieng worked on. Nowadays this sort of thing would be unheard of at any navy facility due to the high level of education the navy provides to it's personel, but it might elesewhere. My first instructor who himself was an ex salt used to tell us to wrap 2" chain around switchgear bus when servicing it just to prevent such an event from killing us. It was his words to give the "kaboom" to the idiot who cuts off the lock. Yesterday I read about a similar incident in Canada where a lock was cut on a main breaker for converyor belt at a large plant, which sent a maintenence worker into a chute and then into process machinery. They also thought the repair was completed without properly checking first. That one resulted in Jail for the guilty party.
