http://www.kvue.com/news/vess/stories/042709kvue_electrocution_concerns-cb.1185b8854.html

I hope this link works. It tells a story about an apparent electrocution of a small girl in Austin Texas. The story portrays the hazard in peoples homes etc. The reporters get a neighbour to comment on electrical safety and I am concerned about a couple of points as well as the general tone of the report.
First the service conductors are implicated. They feed a 1 story house and are connected at 10 feet according to the report. Canadian Code for a new service located in a area accessible to pedestrians would require 11 1/2 feet (3.5 meters) The story stated current code would require 14 feet. Does the NEC require 14 foot clearance for this area? No driveway or access to cars. The wires are clearly out of reach regardless of code requirements but the story does not even broach how a small girl makes contact. Anyone from Austin can comment from a Qualified perspective? I hate to read these stories and I hate the reports even more since they are generally written to arouse emotion and sell air time.

There does seem to be something missing in this story.
What was the fault path?
I do find it interesting they call these triplexes "uninsulated". How do they manage that
From the video




I do agree most AHJs would want those service conductors on a mast above the roof line to get better ground clearance.

Looks like the kid climbed up atop the fence, probably next to the house, and maybe one hand steadying herself on the brick wall of the house, and the other hand reaching up to a hot conductor (maybe some bare conductor near a splice?)? The brick may have been wet from rain, and that may provide enough of a fault current path... Or she was grabbing the conduit.

The kid probably didn't realize that there was a hazard. She probably knew not to stick paper clips into outlets, but she probably didn't realize that those wires were associated with the outlets.

You know ... this thread is unique in that I actually wrote an earlier reply - then censored my comments. It's pretty easy to get side-tracked.

Let's just say that some folks will let neither logic nor fact get in the way of their complaining. It's always someone else's fault, someone else OWES them ....

Such attitudes are a direct threat on those of us who actually DO something for a living. How would you like to be held to account for something you did 40+ years ago. using criteria that didn't exist then?

Sometimes I think the inmates ARE running the asylum.

John,

I had some very strong thoughts too. Yes it is sad they lost a child. However, the install sounds like it was in compliance when installed. Why should the installers or the POCO be held potentially liable? The drivel spouted by the neighbors was distasteful. How long was the neighborhood canvased to get those people to point fingers away from the true cause?

I still don't have an opinion. The triplex is not my first guess. Maybe she caught a weird combination of the brick wall and the little bit of conductor that might have exposed by those splices but I would still expect that to be a "fall" injury.
We are missing something here.

Very sad indeed. But a true accident.
I feel as stated above,that a lack of education on ALL electrical in a home is partly at fault.
The system has been there since the 70s',with out incident.age of system may play a role.For the trees,private property,owners responsibility to notify POCO or get trimming done.

Along with fire safety,smoke detectors,safe meeting place and the use of 911. Most if not all families miss this part.

Blame? None,ignorance to the industry and it's standards makes those comments.
Here (Mass) those installs typically run up the rakes to the ridge,SE or conduit.

"The power lines police believe that killed Cecilia hang just a few feet above the 6 foot fence where Bonilla found her." Is this the missing piece of information?

I don't think people realize those lines only carry 120V, or that they're insulated. They don't look degraded in those photos, either. Is the stay wire energized?

Also, incident happened Saturday, this news piece came out Monday. I bet when the autopsy is performed, they found out her death was not electrocution and completely unrelated to the power lines. Except that nobody bothered to report this story after that. Unless it turned out to be swine flu, in which case, don't worry, you WILL hear an update!

I wonder how the cost to fix this 'problem' got to be $4-7K.

Jim, I wondered that too. I see the tasks as cutting the drop at the service point, removing the existing SE, installing a mast, new SE from the service point to the meter can and the PoCo reattaching the drop from the eave to the mast (if the electrician isn't doing that). A couple of guys in a bucket truck, with the right training and tools should be doing several a day. I don't know about the job situation in Texas but I can't believe this is more than a grand a house, total. In bulk it should be cheaper.
Granted, that might as well be a million for most of the residents in that neighborhood. Times are tough for a lot of people.
Trimming the trees should already be in the PoCo's scope of work.
I am with Steve on this tho, until we know exactly how this girl died, there may not really be anything that needs to be done.

At the risk of 'getting political' .... we can't make informed decisions without information. We rely upon the media for that information. Yet, in this instance, we have all manner of irrelevant, emotional, and incorrect mater presented as 'informations.'

Folks, this is a recipe for MORE danger, not less.

230.25 B says about service drops:

(B) Vertical Clearance
Service-drop conductors, where not in excess of 600 volts, nominal, shall have the following minimum clearance from final grade:
(1) 3.0 m (10 ft) - at the electrical service entrance to buildings, also at the lowest point of the drip loop of the building electrical entrance, and above areas or sidewalks accessible only to pedestrians, measured from final grade or other accessible surface only for service-drop cables supported on and cabled together with a grounded bare messenger where the voltage does not exceed 150 volts to ground
(2) 3.7 ill (12 ft) - over residential property and driveways, and those commercial areas not subject to truck traffic where the voltage does not exceed 300 volts to ground
(3) 4.5 ill (15 ft) - for those areas listed in the 3.7-m (12-ft) classification where the voltage exceeds 300 volts to ground
(4) 5.5 m (18 ft) - over public streets, alleys, roads, parking areas subject to truck traffic, driveways on other than residential property, and other land such as cultivated, grazing, forest, and orchard

Based on the above, and just viewing the video, it looks like it's compliant. I do agree that in our jurisdiction anyway the inspector would probably make them put it on a mast a little higher. Not sure how they would justify it other than the code is minimum and the inspector can make it more stringent if local conditions warrant. Such an order to install a mast could be appealed to the building permit appeals board, but the installer would probably just say ok and put it on a mast.

This is a tragedy, but it isn't the installer or the POCO's 'fault.'

Very well said, Reno. It's sad when someone so young dies from something that could have very well been avoided, and this could have been avoided. She had to have been walking on top of the fence or how else could this have happened, hanging out on the roof?

By the way, who here is getting paid between $4 and $7k to install a mast service through the soffit?

Walking on the fence and grabbing the triplex (even if it had bad insulation) is not a likely fatal injury, unless the fall killed her. It was a wooden fence. Where is the fault path?
If this is really electrical in nature I would look for something like energized aluminum siding or something else closer to the ground.

The fault path was probably from 1 wire in her hand to the metal support wire in the triplex.
I agree with several others on this issue that she probably got a shock and fell off the fence.

Since something simple like a fall doesn't "sell newspapers" as well as being electrocuted, something tells me that we'll never hear about any autopsy results or the actual cause of this little girl's death. The media are pretty much always looking for a villain to blame; they hate things that can be considered truely 'accidents'.

I looked at that site again and they are now talking about her hitting that line with a rake. Four foot tall girl, five foot rake, 10 foot power line. She had to work at this and the rake had to be wet or something.

Not sure what can reasonably be expected from a regulatory perspective that could have prevented this. The hazard was properly mitigated from a code perspective. It took a determined effort from the girl to get up there. Why she wanted to do that, we'll never know. A minimally compliant install that is circumvented by unforeseeable circumstances is not negligence, particularly since I would bet the fence was added after the house was built. I read a story once where some guy in California got killed when he took an aluminum pool skimmer and tried to knock a palm frond off a 7200V line that was 20+ feet in the air. He got killed, his estate sued the POCO for allowing a 'dangerous condition' to exist. Never did find out how it turned out, but that, of course, is absurd.

I don't want to sound callous or anything, but this is just another example of the media "sensationalising" a certian story.
I think it is pretty rich for that reporter to ask the nieghbours their opinion and treat it like some sort of a qualified diagnosis.

If you want to portion blame, it falls directly with the owner of the service drop.
As others have said above, home-owners seem to forget that they have a legal responsibility to keep the wiring on their property in a safe condition.

Sure, this is a tragic event, but it could have been easily avoided.

It also raises the question, exactly how high do you have to install a service, to ensure it will never be contacted by anyone or anything?

I might be biased, but IMO, this has nothing to do with the PoCo, to even suggest otherwise, would be merely avoiding ones own personal responsibility.

Perhaps work on the SE requires bringing the meter to panel cable and panel up to current code in this jurisdiction, plus add 2x factor for news exaggeration and we are in the 2 - 3.5 K range which could easily be the new SE cabling, meter can and panel.

Just to turn this on its head, what if this was an underground service that someone hit while augering holes for footings for a new deck?
If we'd have to run the overhead at some ridiculous height, how deep would we have to run the underground?
What about an overhead feeder to the garage?
Would it help things any if we were required to use armored cable for overhead services?

I don't think I have ever seen an overhead feeder in a dwelling, just the service drop ... unless you include that orange cord people string through the trees to their shed

For the purposes of electrocution, Christmas lights are as dangerous as a service drop. Probably more so since nobody considers them all that dangerous. The only difference is a fault on a service drop won't trip the O/C device but neither will a person "hung" (as in freezing current) on a lamp cord.

It might just be a local thing in Chicago, but I see quite a few areas where the power from the house to the garage is strung overhead. I guess some folks see it as being easier than digging a trench when building the garage, but I always thought it looked just a wee bit ugly.

"Would it help things any if we were required to use armored cable for overhead services?"

It might but think of the size pole and attachments needed to support all that weight

We use a variation of armoured cable here in New Zealand, for overhead service cables to peoples houses.
It's called Neutral Screened cable.

Essentially what this is, is one or two insulated copper conductors, with a screening (multiple copper wires) surrounding the conductors, over this is laid a thick PVC sheathing.

We even bury it underground here without conduit.

The best thing about the screening (which is always at ground potential), is that if the cable is struck by anything, the first conductor to be hit will be the Neutral, if the inner cores are also damaged, the neutral will cause fault current to flow and the circuit protection to operate.

That sounds like SE cable we use from the service point to the service disconnect. Overhead service is generally run with that triplex in the picture.

Agreed but SE has to be at least 3x the weight of triplex - not to mention 5x the price?