ECN Forum Forums Safety Discussion and News Occupational Safety Discussion A shocking story: Here's one, tell me yours

my other shocking story was when i was working on switchboard bear in mind this is 4160 volts and myself and other electrican we both did check the power make sure it is dead and useing hot stick to test it make sure it dead by the hot stick it say dead and his tester say the same but my nonconcat tester say diffrent and i mention to him it still holding juice somewhere it was reading about 230 volts left in the busbar then we go ahead ground it out well it was static charge on line then some how some idoit did not read our warning sign about power is off it was PRINTED IN THREE (3) LANGUNGES one was in english second one was french the thrid one was in spanish then i heard very loud buzz right over my head and my hearing aid can hear" electric noise" and i told my parnter to get out fast because i was only half meter away from the main bussbar and got the guy who did turn on the switch and i expain to him by acting because he not really know engish at all and what to make thing matter worse this fella is dedextric ( sorry for spelling i cant find the engish verison for can't read words)and he say dang i didnt know that because his office light was off grrrrrrrrr what a day and cost to replace the large 4160 volts fuse was no fun but after that i get wise is take the fuse out next time

merci marc

Pretty much Guys,
A lot of these "Accidents" could be put down to lack of thought to the task at hand!.
I'm not meaning to sound silly about this, but, for what I have read over the last few postings, more testing of the test equipment, should have been performed, before it was connected to the "source under test", take a known LIVE supply and check your test equipment by that, simple Electrical Theory.
If I had my Live-Line Alarm (a Modie-Wark) anywhere near HV lines, I would check the darned thing, first at the voltage that I required it to work at, for a start, to make sure that the sucker worked.
Even with Low Voltage work, I always use a known source of Voltage to test the Integrity of my Duspol testers.
Life is far too short to go wasting it away on bad Voltage measurements, especially from 0-400V.

Trumpy, I am just an apprentice dummy, I was using my tester all night and so was the foreman, as I said we tested it back to back and the only thing that changed after the tests was that a light switch was thrown on the other side of the room.

Sometimes when you change a fixture, you can just turn off the switch that controls it instead of tracing the wire all the way through the ceiling through the whole building to the panel, which in this building is completely unmarked. Maybe it's not as good as turning off the circuit breaker, but electricians do it. If all the circuits in the room are shut off at the panel except one, and the hot water heater shows no power on 2 different testers back to back that have been working fine all day and we did test on live power first, I think it's reasonable to go ahead and work in the j-box. If the boss hits a switch and some jackass had wired the hot water heater to such an unrelated circuit, it's understandable that an accident could occur. Sure, it's all human error. Hell, my birth was human error. When the boss says he shut off the circuit breaker and I test it and it's dead, I go ahead and work on it. I can't open every j-box all the way back to the panel and trace the wire back to do a little disconnect at the end of the line. If it's dead, I work on it, and that's the reality I see on the job. We don't have time to go through that much research for small tasks like that. People make mistakes. Hardware fails. Jobs have limited budgets for manhours, they're not all union T&M jobs, so you can only be so safe. A guy could spend $1,000,000 to disconnect a water heater if he goes far enough to eliminate all risks. Safety is first, but nobody has a big enough budget to eliminate all risk from the job. Sometimes we have to stand on top of a 12 foot ladder. Sometimes we have to reach with a drill pushing a Unibit. We make mistakes and hopefully we can learn from each other's mistakes. It seems like you are implying that if we wouldn't all be idiots acting foolishly, we wouldn't get shocked, so why talk about it? It's not always that simple, but all of us have done something wrong accidentally, whether it shocked us or not. Brain fade, fatigue, long hours, hunger, many things can lead to a wrong move. Nobody knows it all, nobody is infallible. It's eye-opening, for those of us who haven't reached perfection yet, to hear examples of what led to somebody getting shocked. We are safer as a result of hearing these stories. We learn not to let it happen to us when we hear of it happening to somebody else.

Well said, "Spark Master Flash"

I hate getting told by some of these guys. Like we are stupid and incompetent and are trying to get shocked. They are so unrealistic.

You are right, We are the top 10% of our trade simply because we read these threads and are seeking out knowledge about our trade. Which will help us be safe by learning from others mistakes.

Be Safe.

Tev Castro

Spark Master Flash,
straightedge,
Look fella's, I'm sorry if I appeared to be putting you guys down, for lack of testing or so forth, I apologise if any offence was taken at my comments.
I must say, also that no-one is perfect and I too have done some pretty silly things in the past, due to lack of thought and I've wrecked more than one set of Pliers and Sidecutters in the time that I have been involved with Electrical work.
Yes, straightedge, we are ALL here to learn from others experiences and I will freely admit to not knowing everything, that's probably why I am here at ECN!.

Hey Trumpy,

Thanks, no problem, I hope I didn't seem to go too overboard. I'm glad I can come here to talk about things, because if my co-workers can't enlighten me, somebody here can and I'm a better and safer electrician than I was before, and it happens overnight, thanks to the internet and this forum.

Take care, have a good one.

Spark Master Flash,
Well, SMF, if here is here, you may have just found the best place to do this!.
Demolition work is never simple and disconnecting circuits while there are a million other things going on around you, does not make life any easier either.
The idea that the switch-board room that you guys had no access to, sounds a bit dangerous!.
(Can anyone else tell me if this is allowed in the US?.)
With respect to getting access to it in an Emergency?.
But SMF, It sounds to me like you had a rather rough Intro to the Electrical Trade in the US, getting a shock so early in your "time' does nothing for the confidence.
Being a guy who trains Apprentices in both Electricians work and Line- work, I know to do a decent assessment of the risk, before work even starts!.
SMF, ever need some advice?, you've just found the home of it, ECN!!

Greenlee Audible/visual non contact voltage tester is my friend!

Was running some new (additional) 3/4 EMTs to comply with an AHJ w/ attitude (ever seen one?) over # of conductors in raceway.

Was pulling "old" wire out of "old" EMT when I got "tingled". Same thing, on top of a ladder through body to other hand. Luckily, it was only 110, and so I felt it in the "working" hand.
I shouted to my super "HEY...did you kill this blue line?"
He answered "yeah...oh, wait a minute"
CLICK of a breaker.
I hear this sheepish voice "Sorry, there are two blues!"

Now I check everything. It only takes a second, and it makes life easier, and longer.

Other time was when I was rewiring my house, and didn't realize that several neutrals had been piggybacked. (Was rewiring old Rubber/cloth with THHN, and was trying to keep most of the house powered.)

Had killed the hot for the circuit I was working on, but with the aforementioned cross-connection to a circuit under load, well...

Using Kliens to strip neutral, and hit the side of the 1900...

POP...there goes the night vision, and the 12awg strippers were now 10awg...

I killed the Main for the rest of the work that evening... and I was glad I didn't grab the end (while standing in water!).

Trumpy, we did have access to the electrical room, but we were the only ones. Nobody else could have turned a breaker on. That's what I meant.

Doug, I'm with you on checking power every time. Every box I go into, I check for power with my Fluke hot stick. That thing works pretty well, ignoring anything under 90v. Not as sensitive as the last one I had, it discerns hot and cold wires better than the other one. The guys at work like my Fluke more than their hot sticks after working with them side by side. I'm not aware of what might be better. I also use a Fluke tester with amp clamp when I have to.

You know, those neutrals can surprise a guy, can't they? I'm always leery of neutrals, I know how people use a neutral across different circuits, and under an amp load they can get me, so I treat them like they're hot. I've never been hit by a neutral, knock on conduit.

Some of the guys I've worked with say that a neutral can hit you harder than a hot wire, and I wonder how that can be. Maybe somebody can enlighten me on this. Harder than a hot wire? Seems impossible.

That old cotton covered wire is scary looking stuff, it's hard to trust it not to crack when I bend it. A friend of mine has an older house with a wall heater in the bathroom. I took it apart and found that cotton covered wire, it looked like a short waiting for a place to happen, plus there's no ground with it. I didn't know there was rubber inside. Never have worked with it.

12 awg turned into 10 awg...har har, I've got a pair of cable cutters like that. Different cause, though - I had to learn not to cut more than one wire at a time.

Zapped a good pair of Klein needlenose moving wires around in an old, overstuffed box. I can't stand working with tools that look like they were used for a freshman welding class, so I went straight out and bought a new pair. Am I wrong to do this? Working with zapped tools is like being a stuntman with one eye and a bad limp, going by the name of "Lucky". Just looks bad.

Spark Master,
I'd say that Neutrals can be just as dangerous as a Phase wire.
I've worked on circuits where the Neutral has been commoned up with other different circuits and when the Neutrals are cut at a fitting, you end up with the line voltage on the ends of some of the Neutrals.
I have heard of Electricians being electrocuted when hooking a Neutral conductor in to the Neutral busbar on a switch-board panel and getting a hand-hand shock, by touching the end of the wire and the busbar at the same time.
A Neutral is not a Neutral until it is connected to it's proper busbar, besides, I wouldn't personally hook up a circuit with the circuit energised.
You mentioned the Fluke tester with the amp-clamp on it, is this the T-5 600/1000, you are referring to? .