In the court room, foul-ups on the part of owners and staff don't bite the contractor -- nor soil the reputation of the AHJ.
The strangest dang things happen -- and then the litigation starts.
As a professional, you want your work to never be blamed for injury or death -- in court.
Towards that end, the NEC is you best defense.
The defense of:"I've never seen that before,..." is not going to cut it.
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The typical, relevant, panic emergency is triggered by earthquakes/ tsunamis and collisions.
As the Sendai tsunami showed, all bets are off. Yet, you still, in that instance, had an opportunity to kill power before the sea came in -- and up.
Sandy is another instance of the slow build nightmare. Rather than waiting for the OCPD to trip, a wise person kills the power at the panel/ Service. In such circumstances, leaving things energized just makes conditions worse.
BTW, it's astonishing to think that the Japanese 'blew off' the significance of the (Richter 9.0) earthquake -- staying too casual -- even as the monster tsunami raced landward.
The quake was so strong that it threw people into the air -- and tossed moving trains clean off the tracks. (Entire trains went missing -- and into the ocean.) Even that was not enough to alert the common man.) Public warning claxtons were wailing straight on through, of course.
Sendai, Sandi -- and the Jonestown flood all show that false alarms and false security are lethal.
[We may be seeing a bizarre repetition of this phenomena WRT North Korea. Kim has everyone puzzled.]
