Hello Friends.
This past weekend we had a mobile home fire, caused by a "comedy of errors" both electrical and human. HO had been having trouble with the power switch on a small window unit air conditioner. He shorted the switch, thus allowing the unit to run continuously. More problems followed, with the breaker for the AC circuit starting to trip periodically. HO's solution to this was to tape the CB in the ON position. At some point after this, HO woke up to the smell of smoke, and investigating, discovered a small cabinet beneath the AC unit on fire, having been ignited by the nearby wall receptacle. When our first engine company arrived, we found the wiring in the wall in a state of meltdown. Not being able to immediately located the breaker box inside the mobile home, a firefighter disconnected power at the main switch under the POCO meter. The breaker panel was eventually found (hidden behind a closet door), and one of the breakers was indeed taped in the ON position - the firefighter who located it also told me that it was very warm as well.
Regrettably, I did not get to see first-hand what brand the breaker panel was (I was chauffer/engineer for the company). I always thought that circuit breakers would trip internally, no matter what was done to the exterior operating handle, and it might be that this breaker suffered some form of damage from repeatedly tripping and resetting, and eventually "welded" itself in the ON position.
Are any of y'all familiar with any brands of circuit breakers that will NOT trip if the handle is physically restrained, as in this case?
Mike (mamills)
PS. I thought this might be an FPE-type incident, and to that end, I showed the captain of our crew an old FPE breaker I had laying around in the trunk of my car. He denied that the breakers in the panel looked like the FPE.
