Just a reminder and a prayer for the little kid! The situation described here is one that may arise again! I will post images of street boxes used for splicing street lighting here in my area.

joe, this is a very sad article about this little girl. it was caused by someones oversight.it goes to point out that we should keep our eyes open for all possibilites that may get some one injured.my prayers & sympathy go out to the girls family!

It's so sad to hear of incidences such as this, which could have so easily been avoided.

It also acts as a reminder to never take shortcuts or to omit important safety items such as a bonding/grounding jumper.

The person responsible for this installation will have the death of this little girl on his conscience forever.

so tragic......

That's just so ridiculous!!,
under anybodies Codes, this piece of metal, being exposed to touch, should have been bonded to Earth.
I hope that this keeps, the person who installed, this shoddy poor excuse for a job,awake at night, knowing that he has killed an innocent child!!.

Trumpy,
Bonding to earth will not solve the problem. It must be bonded back to the grounded conductor at the service equipment to clear the fault. The earth is too poor of a conductor to really help prevent injury or death.
Has anyone ever seen a bonded box cover in an installation of this type? I never have.
Don

Don:
We use "quazite" boxes only. They are a cement/fiberglass combo (I think) and they have a cover of the same material. Personally, if I or my guys "had to use the cover to push the conductors into the box" we would know that something was WRONG. No way in hell would we leave any "hot" conductors touching a metal cover, or any other cover.

As to seeing a cover "bonded", yes we do install bonding jumpers on enclosure doors, and large hinge cover pull/splice boxes. It's our MANDATORY practice, and a "spec" by some of the PE's we work with/for.
I can't say that I've seen a jumper on the type of installation described in the article. You may have me looking now, but the majority of metal cover boxes are utility owned & maintained.

Anyone know the date of this horrible accident???

John

We also use the "quazite" for some of our underground installations. The boxes that I have seen with metal covers have been in sidewalks for street lighting and traffic lights. Some are utility owned, others are owned by the cities and were installed by electrical contractors. I have never seen one of these with a bonding jumper to the metal cover. Up until 2 or 3 years ago, the State of Illinois did not even use an equipment grounding conductor in traffic signal circuits, so even if someone wanted to bond the cover there was no way to do it. That has changed now, but they did not go back and install EGCs on the existing equipment.
Don

I think there may be a little confusion with international terminology here.

When Trumpy wrote "should have been bonded to earth" I think Don took that to mean a jumper to a local ground rod, which certainly would not have helped (no TT systems in America!)

Don,
Translated into American parlance, I think what Mike was saying was that the box should have been bonded to the equipment grounding conductor.

This was printed in the first edition of "EDI" 1990-91, a classic series of monthly magazines published be Joe McPartland.


[This message has been edited by Joe Tedesco (edited 01-08-2003).]

That was an excellant magazine.

Just a reminder!

Keep a look out for this stuff!

Joe

I don't know how it works where you guys are but here in Ontario Canada the poco's work is now inspected by real inspectors and this type of accident is the reason why.I guess up up untill 99 the poco was exempt from inspection.One life taken beause of an uninspected job is far to many.This is my biggest fear,making a mistake that someday will cost a life other than my own.Themost important lesson I ever learned was when i was an apprentice and did not properly terminate a ground a month later there was a ground fault a person got a bad poke and I still feel like crap to this day. Now I always remember the ground wire is the most important of them all and double check them before moving on.

[This message has been edited by frank (edited 09-22-2003).]