In my fire department, it was common practice a few years ago to routinely pull the meter when a service disconnect needed to be made, in lieu of a real switch. Usually, this went well, except for a couple of occasions when the glass housing around the meter was also broken. I will say that, thanks primarily to the members of ECN (and some of the horror stories y'all related here), I was able to discourage this practice a couple of years ago. The normal firefighting gear - boots, leather gloves, turnout coat and pants, and a helmet with an open face shield - is a very poor substitute for proper PPE. Nowadays, we simply proceed with extreme caution when access to an interior disconnect is risky, or has been compromised by the fire. If the fire has burned out the service conductors to the building, we secure the area where the conductors have fallen, or we move them with an insulated "hot stick" (the same type used by the POCO. with the exception that we never use ours for opening primary disconnects on poles) to a remote area.
We had a fire many years ago at a local auto dealership, in which the fire actually originated in the electrical service equipment inside the building. There being no disconnect switch outside, we protected the remainder of the building while the electric equipment continued it's meltdown until it finally blew the primary fuses on the pole. The new electric service sports a nice 600 amp disco on the outside.
Mike (mamills)
[This message has been edited by mamills (edited 10-20-2005).]
