ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Anyone got a funny ground rod story?

My former co-worker when I was with a local EC discovered what happens when:

You call "Dig Alert" and they mark where the utilities are, but miss one key item;

You're working on a light industrial center expansion, and running behind;

You have to drive a 10' rod in a hurry, so out comes the Hammer-drill;

Carefully noting D-A's markings, you find your spot;

Hammering away, the first 5-6 feet or so go in like butter;

Said rod suddenly emits blue flames and begins to glow;

POCO's expulsion fuses on a pole too close by let go with a "oops in the shorts" bang;

Because you've just spiked a 12kV class 3-phase feeder which:

Was the key item Dig Alert missed!

Oh, we're having fun now!!

This was related to me by him, I missed this one in person.

Thankfully, since the marks were missed, it was the POCO and D-A who ate the costs on this one.

mxslick, Thats not funny, someone could have gotten real dead! I guess its funny in retrospect, and a few years to cool off...

BTW, EC&M printed the story from the lead of this post in an edited version, a few monthes later.

mxslick, something like that happened at Newark Airport about ten years ago. They were installing metal pilings for a monorail system, and found the main power feed for the entire airport except for the tower. 3 phase at something around 25KV. Mismarked lines it seems. Also it seems the guy running the pile driver was okay as he was sitting in a cab in the machine and thus saw no voltage across himself. Most of the short went right into the ground around the metal piling being driven.

I stood with an inspector at an apartment building in Foster City CA and watched while a journeyman from a competing shop cut 4 bundles of ground rods in half with a porta band. The inspector didn't go on the job until he was sure they had driven every one of them. Can you say RED TAG?

wa2ise...you forgot to mention the next time down at ol' EWR (Newark Airport for the aerodynamically challanged)....not only did the main feeder get "spiked", but also the back up. This was in about 2000 - 2001 when the expansion at Terminal "C" was underway.

e57:

Indeed, it is only because enough time has passed, no one was hurt and the guy involved now thinks it's funny that I decided to share that story.

My coworker thinks it was the wet ground, his (dry) gloves and just plain good luck that he didn't feel a thing.

On a related note: (sorry for the OT)

Thanks to a friend at a POCO, I was able to don the appropriate PPE and get to touch a live 12kv lug in a padmount switch. Even with the proper gear in good condition there is enough potential to feel a very slight tickle through the gloves...or maybe it was just me freaking out by realizing what I was doing!! I have a LOT of respect for linemen, I've heard and seen enough horror stories about when things go wrong.

But when you consider the very fact of the increased voltage/current levels they face, it seems statistically that being a lineman is (maybe?) safer than being an EC? (Or cinema tech for that matter.) I had considered line work for a long time (actually took a course while in the Air Force, passed the test 82%) but I can't stand heights!

wa2ise, celtic:

I think our linemen here would agree that the best thing to do if in any vehicle in contact with high voltage is to STAY PUT! Unless the vehicle is seriously on fire it's the best place to be until the power can be cut off.

Some years ago a local news reporter was seriously injured when she tried to exit the newsvan, the antenna mast of which had been raised into a 34.5kv line. One of the video accounts clearly shows that the antenna was in hard contact for several seconds with nothing happening UNTIL she opened the door and touched the sidewalk. Huge flashover, several secondary explosions heard as the lines bounced around, the phase in question broke just outside the substation (Less than 1/2 mile from incident) turning the asphalt at the contact point into glass. The lineman I spoke with reported that over 90 "targets" were recorded from the surge!

Hit the main and the backup? Murphy was hard at work that day it seems...


[This message has been edited by mxslick (edited 07-11-2005).]

Don't suppose it occured to them to lower the mast?

Did some research on accidents in the media due to a low flying news helicopter that coninually buzzed my neiborhood @ 100', and by accident, came accross a whole website devoted to dumb things done with a news truck. Power lines, driving on the freeway with the mast up, covering a hurricane and putting the mast up only to fall over... Whole laundry list.

Oh wait, here it is, I think. (Note many of these are fatalities, and not funny, but some definate canidates for the darwin awards.) http://www.engsafety.com/safetypg2/Papers/Past-incidents/list.html

[This message has been edited by e57 (edited 07-11-2005).]

(With apologies to the moderators for the threadjack):

edit: e57 and I were posting at the same time

My understanding is that the mast controls are on the outside of the van,(on a pendant cable as well as directly on the van chassis), with the idea being so the engineer can see where the mast is going. No controls in the van. (Maybe an "Emergency Lower" button would be a good idea?)

After looking in my archive on this incident, I found out that even though the engineer had stopped raising the mast when she (not a misprint) realized it was about to contact the line, she let go of the control. But the mast being pneumatic(hydraulic?) continued up for a few feet, enough to hit the line.

There was a lot of irony in this incident namely:

They had moved the van onto the sidewalk from the road, as they thought the mast would hit the lines, not realizing that the slope of the sidewalk tilted the van toward the road;

Even if the van had been level, the mast would've still been too close (well within flashover distance according to the POCO lineman I spoke with);

They were directly across from a famous cemetary, covering a story on child safety;

A few weeks prior, another crew in a different state was killed raising their mast into 110kV transmission lines in a rural area.

Maybe a new topic is in order here?



[This message has been edited by mxslick (edited 07-11-2005).]

It was 1981 in Mississippi at the mouth of the Pearl River where they were building a chemical plant. I was a 2nd year helper…no apprentice program. The journeyman I was assigned to was working with an old German engineer named Otto. We needed to drive a separate ground rod for the TDC 2000 so I pounded in the rod I was given. The next thing I know Otto wants to check the resistance between that and building steel; He brings out this ground resistance meter and measures 190 Ohms. “Add another rod” he said with his thick accent. (most of those good ole southern boys down there couldn’t understand a thing Otto was saying most of the time.
The rod I drove was not threaded so I had to start over with a rod that was, again Otto tested and again the resistance was over 150 Ohms. “Add another rod”, another test and “add another rod.” This may have been old Mississippi mud but now it was time to get the air hammer. After six sticks and tests, the resistance was still over 90 Ohms and half the day had passed. Otto was getting tired of having his regular work interrupted to come and test every time but he wouldn’t let anyone else test either.
At noon time the temperature was into the high 80’s and it was sticky out so driving rod with a slide hammer was beginning to take its toll. Just before lunch my journeyman and I took the reading and found that it was the same as it was for the last test 10 feet earlier. At lunch I went out to the scrap yard where some old ground rod that had been dug up was laying. I dragged a piece in to the work area and cut the top off and drove the cut end into the ground just out of sight behind Otto’s pickup truck. When we came back from lunch and Otto came out to measure again, no change, 90 Ohms again. I looked at Otto and said “this doesn’t make any sense it should be getting lower.” Otto replied “I know vat are you guys doing out here anyway” Then I walked over by his truck and said “Hey Otto I think I know what’s wrong” Otto came over and saw the end of the old bent rod I had driven backwards into the ground. He immediately attached the end of the meter to the end of the rod and began to take a reading. “I get no’ting” he said and began checking the meter to see if it was correct. “No, I get no’ting, there’s some’ting wrong here” I walked back over to the end of the rod and yelled over to Otto to look, and said “could this be the problem” as I pulled the cut end out of the ground. “YOU SON OF A GUN” was all he said for the rest of the day. Three sticks later, at 110 feet we reached less than 5 Ohms.