I found this US video on a German web board and thought you might be interested.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0c9_1297800405To me, it is fairly surprising to see how this person attempts to cut the wire while it's arcing to the ground right next to him. According to the info I have it was a piece of triplex accidentally energised with MV.
It's a disturbing video, for a number of reasons.
At first glance, it appears the person is a pro, wearing typical PPE. I can't see if he's wearing gloves, but it sure looks like he has a flash hood on ubder that hard hat. After that, his actions leave me completely confused.
The wire sure does look like triplex - two 'hot' wires wrapped around a bare neutral. The arcing you see is probably between the wire ends, rather than the ground they're laying on.
Still, if he's a lineman- where is his truck? I would have expected to see him in his insulated bucket, making the disconnection at the pole. I mean- what's his plan for the newly cut wires? If nothing else, at the pole there will be some slack, some space between the wires.
I think, instead, what we have is a simple downed power line, at 'residential' volyage, being toyed with by some untrained 'other trades' type. The 'hood' might be simple cold weather wear- a hard hat liner not properly installed in the hard hat. ZFor all I knopw, he was trying to cut the wires with pruning shears, and shorted the shears to the bare neutral.
I just realised I made a mistake - I didn't want to write "fatal" as I have no idea about the outcome but the edit time is over.
Indeed, it's pretty unclear what he wants to achieve - if he succeded to cut the wire it would have been on the ground again, not changing the situation at all.
Perhaps the best thing to do for an untrained person would have been to just leave it alone and wait (after having called 911).
If he had succeeded in cutting the wire where he was working, it still would have been long enough to drape to the ground and short out all over again.
So he would have been injured or killed and done nothing other than move the problem a few feet to the left.
Something tells me that this guy was no pro; but he apparently had a good enough story that the FD let him work without hassling him about it.
Fatal shock means that he was electrocuted.I hope he survived.I doesn't look to me like a pro electrician too.More like fireman.
Fatal shock means that he was electrocuted.I hope he survived.
Yeah, I realised my mistake as the first reply came in... I have no idea whether he survived or not, so I can't tell whether it actually was a fatal shock. When I realised my mistake, I couldn't edit the post any more though.
This player had zero knowledge of electric power circuits.
He probably survived.
Interestingly he collapsed from shock at the end of the vidi.