ECN Forum Forums Safety Discussion and News Occupational Safety Discussion Would you try to rescue a cat?

A .22 would solve that problem, be much cheaper, and not require anyone to climb a pole.

I would probably just open a can of tuna.
Joe

I wouldn't worry about the cat unless its plainly obvious the cat is in some trouble and can't / won't get down. And besides IF the cat does get tangled in the primaries, isn't that one of the reasons the PoCo has " auto-reclosers" on most of their primary circuits?

A.D

I think the idea is to put the cat in that yellow grunt bag and lower it by the rope you see dangling at his feet.

If the cat did get into something hot, it would most likely be knocked off the pole, just like so many squirrels that get fried. If not, then the recloser would operate and someone would have to clean the carcass off and make the line back hot.

Just a little more background ...

This cat was recovered after spending at least two nights up the pole. Maybe three.

The Fire Dept actually offered to hose the cat off the pole. Let[s see ... water stream and 4160v lines ... not in my recipe book!

The cat was, indeed, placed in the bag and brought down that way. Good eye!

I am glad to see I can rely upon the caliber of help here at ECN

If some lineman would care to enlighten us as to there general procedure in such cases, I'd love to hear it. For example- do they kill the power to the neighborhood?

I doubt it. There may be an individual case where the clearances are such that there is the possiblity of an arc flash if the cat got frisky.

In general all effort is made to keep power on. There is less 'general procedure' than you might imagine! :P

Operational procedures with most PoCo's entail that the supply be left on.
As I have said here before, animal rescues from poles are not that un-usual.
But, having said that, you never use a ladder.
A bucket truck is almost a given thing, any animal can become really un-weildly when met with a guy trying to move them off of a cross-arm.
Having said all of that above, any animal is never in any danger of being killed unless they get between 2 phases at any voltage.
There is no reference to earth when you are up on a pole, unless there is a bare wire heading towards the bottom of the pole.
Even so, you might only be "rescuing a small animal", linemen have been killed doing this simple task.

Sorry, but that's just untrue. Even if the pole does not have a ground (all wood poles here do), wood is not an insulator for HV. While not as much current would flow as if the animal was between two phase wires, or phase to neutral, current would flow. Especially when the current would only have to track the wood at most a couple feet, and probably not that far, to get to the copper ground which is connected to earth and mainline neutral.

I'm curious about why you would say that. Do you use 3-wire delta in NZ? If so then I understand, it would work that way for you guys, but here pretty much everything is 4-wire wye circuits with phase-to-ground potential on every pole. As an aside, the most common animal frying event is when squirrels get on top of transformers and contact the stinger wire. We've started using rubber guards on top of the HV bushing, and 'insulated' stinger wire. I say 'insulated' because obviously it's not rated for HV but it is enough to keep the cutout from blowing when Alvin or Simon do something stupid.

You're right that it can be dangerous though. Perhaps 'operational procedure' should be to knock kitties off the pole with an extendo stick? :P

A fiberglass claw attachment/noose on a hotstick? That could be kinda fun, trying to grab the cat while it runs back and forth on the crossarm. Or not.