Five years ago in alaska a woman and her dog were killed when the dog stopped at a stream coming from a culvert under the highway to drink and was electrocuted. The woman tried to save her dog and was also electrocuted.
There was a major uproar locally but still the resulting report was never published officially. Since I wasn't involved personally this is simply heresay all I can say was what I was told by a friend who was involved directly.
The culvert under the highway had heattrace to help thaw it in the spring and control roadside runoff.
This was a commercial brand heattrace but was not listed nor approved for wet locations. ( aren't all heattrace applications wet locations?)
It was installed in non-watertite 3/4" conduit along the bottom of the culvert.
It was damaged during the original installation. (outer vinyl jacket ripped and braided stainless ground torn away for 3", inner vinyl jacket abraided in the same 3" with two bare spots showing of the primary conductor through the semi-conductor material.)
When the heattrace faulted and tripped the breaker the contractor removed the conduit ground reference since the last 40' of the run was pvc the only ground reference was via a grounding clamp on the line end of the run with a #10 ground connected external to the conduit.
The #10 ground buried in the same trench as the conduit was connected in the j-box to another #10 by means of an orange wire nut. (which the contractor later claimed one wire pulled out of and was not deliberately disconnected. Even though the wire capped by the orange appeared to have been cut off flush with the outer jacket and then capped.)
Uhhhh...excuse me?...two number tens under an orange?....uhh sure buddy. You might get away with that in front of a jury but any electrician will know that two tens won't fit in an orange wire nut.
It worked fine till about three months later at which point it started tripping the (already oversized) 30amp non-gfci breaker. (beats me where it got a good enough ground reference from to trip)
The circuit was de-energized for approximately three more months with no action taken.
The winter was passing and suddenly the highway people needed the thing to work again. The contractor was called back.
The 30 amp two pole breaker that was tripping was replaced with a 100 amp breaker.
The dog and the woman were electrocuted in the small pool of water at the end of the culvert.
Hmmmm....question is how many people already knew the water was at least potenially hot....or maybe how many cared?....that answer appears to be zero
