Man Electrocuted Trying to Restore Power
July 5, 2003

GEORGETOWN TOWNSHIP -- A man is dead after a tragic accident on the 4th of July. John Clay worked in construction, his friends say he could fix or build almost anything. So seeing Clay die during a fix-it project was a complete surprise. Storms knocked out power to the area during the holiday, so 58-year-old Clay and his friend, Roger Lucas, had a plan to re-trip the circuit breaker. They used a Hi-lo to work on the breaker box, 30 feet in the air. Clay used a metal rod to knock it into place, the shock shot him all the way to the ground. "He touched the wood and the breaker at the same time," said friend Billy Schneider. "The wood acted as a conductor and it grounded him as he was electrocuted." Schneider attempted CPR, but it was no use. Clay was later pronounced dead on scene by paramedics. Friends say Clay had confidence to do anything. He figured they could fix the problem beforde the power company. "John had displayed to everyone who had known him that he was basically capable of almost anything," said Schneider. Clay was from Switzerland. He had a reunion planned with his family whom he had not seen in decades. They were notified of the news on the fourth.

Just have a few questions regarding this accident:

• What is a Hi-lo, is this some form of a Cherry-Picker?.(30' is a long way up, at any rate)
• What sort of voltage was involved in the contact?.(HV, tranny protection?)
• Using Metal around Live Fusing?(It's always live at ONE end!)

It's just a REAL shame that this whole accident occured, in the first place and that the family where notified on the 4th of July(a day meant for celebration).
But, on the other side of the coin, us Linemen, Faultsmen and other Staff, do not wear Live Gloves, use Hot-Sticks and work from Insulated EWP's, for the sheer enjoyment of it.
As cold as it sounds, I think that Alcohol, may have played a part in this accident.
Also, Over-confidence, causes more injuries and death to workers, than what is stated in statistics.
What are your thoughts, on my above comments?.

Trumpy,

I'm not sure in this instance, but usually I've heard Hi-lo used as another name for a Fork-Lift. (and 30 feet does sound a bit high)

I don't know what type of a situation they're describing here, but I agree that over-confidence is probably a factor in a majority of "accidents".

Bill

Maybe it was just sheer ignorance by someone who understood just enough about electricity to be dangerous.

Perhaps he's worked enough on regular household stuff and just didn't realize the dangers of high voltage arcing across gaps, needing better insulation etc.

Sad, indeed.

I wonder if there had been previous outages and the POCO was observed resetting the breaker.

Looks easy enough--all that is needed is some kind of stick...

ThinkGood,
That's just what I mean,Over-Confidence.
Using the wrong gear for the job and not having the skills to do the job properly and safely, also comes into it.
Unfortunately, it was a hard lesson learned, in this case.

Hard lesson indeed. In cases like this I sometimes wonder whether the unfortunate person ever knows what hit him and whether he has a split-second realization of what he's done wrong.