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#163048 04/29/07 09:36 PM
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 482
Z
Zapped Offline OP
Member
Apparently, this is all caused by the downed power line you see at the beginning of the video. Not what we wanna see, ever.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=87b_1177809849

Zapped #163050 04/29/07 09:48 PM
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 939
F
Member
shocked now that cooking there i can see why the fire dept have to wait until the poco kill the power to get that fire out that pretty instene there

Merci, Marc


Pas de problme,il marche n'est-ce pas?"(No problem, it works doesn't it?)

Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 228
J
Member
Is there any reason the OCPD did not open, even if it is on the POCO side? That seemed to be a pretty big fault

Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 361
C
Member
That video is from 2004.

I was able to just barely read the sign at about 4:09 ....Aldo's

That was a nightclub in Lyndhurst, NJ

Here is the accompaning story:
Fire destroys Lyndhurst nightspot
http://www.northjersey.com/page.php...ZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2NTY2OTkw


~~ CELTIC ~~
...-= NJ =-...
Celtic #163068 04/30/07 09:21 AM
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 482
Z
Zapped Offline OP
Member
Thanks for the added info Celtic.

And yes Cooper, that's my question exactly. This went from a nasty arc to a devestaing fire. Isn't the job of an overcurrent device specifically to avoid fires and protect the installation? This is obviously a massive failure all the way around.

Any linemen in here know why this happened, and what was supposed to happen when the line fell?

Zapped #163073 04/30/07 11:27 AM
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 558
C
Member
Quote
The fire spread to the electrical system, which set off a series of explosions.


From the article it sounds like the fire is what caused the electrical arcing. I’m guessing that the fire melted the insulation on the service conductors feeding the building.


Curt Swartz
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 9,923
Likes: 32
G
Member
Service conductors essentially have no overcurrent protection. On my street we have 3 transformers feeding a 120/240 "bus" that serves about 10 houses. If overall demand is low you could see virtually all of that power in one SE fault. I doubt you could ever blow a primary fuse.


Greg Fretwell
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 101
J
Member
As spectacular as that arc fire looked, the fact that it was continuing to arc instead of blowing up was indicative of it being a high resistance ground fault. That would explain why the SCPD did not clear it; it wasn't pulling sufficient current to blow the fuses or trip the breaker. That video makes a great argument for arcing ground fault detection devices.


JRaef

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