OT - Feeling Lucky Enough to Buy A Lottery Ticket

[charlieb]

Ten seconds before the 12KV line broke and fell sparking and arcing onto the street, I'd walked under it without even being aware it, and two more 12KV lines, were lurking overhead. Had I started my walk home from my oldest's place down the street a few seconds later I probably would have been what all the neighbors came out to see instead of the sparking arcing wire in the street burning a hole in the asphalt.

When the fire department showed up I took off - to buy a lottery ticket or two - certain that my luck had to be a the highest it has been for the last 10 or more years. JackPot is at 95mil tonite and probably will go over 100 mil by tomorrow nite. I feel a MAJOR NEENER coming on - EVERYTHING in the Festool Catalogue, couple of Felder machines, a Stubby lathe, Aggazzini bandsaw, Shop Bottus Maximus and a shop just a tad smaller than Tom Plamann's. Even if I don't win anything I'm still one lucky sob.

Note to all of you - when a 12KV line is arcing on the groung - stay back AT LEAST 60 FEET. 'Lectricity can travel in the ground in roots, sewer lines etc. that far and come up just about anywhere

- so said two firemen on scene.

charlie b

[Lew Hodgett]

charlieb wrote: > Ten seconds before the 12KV line broke and fell sparking and arcing > onto the street, I'd walked under it without even being aware it, and > two more 12KV lines, were lurking overhead.

12KV is quite common.

Be aware 33Kv and 69KV are not uncommon distribution voltages depending on area.

Running overhead down the main drag of a suburban community were 345KV lines.

Best thing you can do is be alert to the fact high voltage distribution lines are out there.

Lew

[Leon]

Kinda wild isn't it. That happen where I worked about 24 years ago. I worked at a car dealership and a freight truck backed up to the loading dock. There were 2 power poles immediately next to that drive and the drive opened out on a busy street near a busy intersection. The trailer bumped the pole, the old cable connecting the transformers touched each other and burned causing the cable to drop and arch to the ground causing the next cable on the next pole to do the same until the power cables had dropped completely around 1/2 the building and through 2 intersections.

I recall in the dawn hours how the outside of the building flashed when each cable burned through and then hitting the ground. The sound was a tremendous bussing sound as it started at the far back side of the building and made the "L" and came up to the opposite corner of the shop. We all stood there watching as the noise and light came in our direction. Pretty scary.

[Morris Dovey]

charlieb wrote: | Ten seconds before the 12KV line broke and fell sparking and arcing | onto the street, I'd walked under it without even being aware it, | and two more 12KV lines, were lurking overhead. Had I started my | walk home from my oldest's place down the street a few seconds later | I probably would have been what all the neighbors came out to see | instead of the sparking arcing wire in the street burning a hole | in the asphalt. | | When the fire department showed up I took off - to buy a lottery | ticket or two - certain that my luck had to be a the highest it | has been for the last 10 or more years. JackPot is at 95mil | tonite and probably will go over 100 mil by tomorrow nite. | I feel a MAJOR NEENER coming on - EVERYTHING in the Festool | Catalogue, couple of Felder machines, a Stubby lathe, Aggazzini | bandsaw, Shop Bottus Maximus and a shop just a tad smaller | than Tom Plamann's. Even if I don't win anything I'm still | one lucky sob.

Might as well not have bought the ticket. Sounds to me as though you might have used up all the luck in one go.

Talk about being in the wrong place at the right time!

Glad you're OK.

-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA

[Robatoy]

On May 8, 12:27 am, charlieb wrote: [snipped scary story]

Those smoke-eaters have a bit of a distorted view, but caution may be embellished to everyone's advantage.

I have seen, with my own eyes, what can happen when a human bag of saline solution gets in the way of a shitload of voltages. An electrician backed into a cabinet which normally holds an ACB (Air Circuit Breaker), basically a switch where 3 massive bars slam into 3 contacts under the power of 300 PSI of air. This particular one (Boiler feedpump) was rated at 23KV at 3000 amps. About the size of a large kitchen pantry. They wheel them out for maintainance and you can see the three bus bars, carrying full power from Station Service. Those bars are supposed to be isolated from the supply when serviced. This fellow backed into the cabinet and (they theorised) made contact with a pair of pliers sticking out from his back pocket. The steel toes from his work boots were blobs of metal, stuck to the floor, which looked like splatter from an arc welder. Pieces of uniform everywhere... and a lot of ash and slime with a scattering of charred bones...and then that very bad smell.

It didn't happen on my watch, but I knew the guy who signed off on the protection/safety certificate without checking if the circuit had been isolated. It's hard to tell which family suffered more after that.

And every farking summer, some farking idiot will hit powerlines with his aluminum ladder.

r---->who didn't need this walk down memeory lane this morning.

[Robatoy]

You're a lucky man, charlieb.

[Larry Blanchard]

of=A0the=A0building

Reminds me of the time I was driving through a thunderstorm and lightni= ng hit the hood. It left a burned spot. Talk about blind - good thing it was= a deserted straight road :-). I got home and carefully jumped out so I wouldn't be touching the car and the ground at the same time. Wasn't r= eally necessary, as I found out when I tossed a chain over the car to ground = it - but it was the only way I was going to get out of that car!

Or the friend who was working on some radio equipment and got shocked s= uch that he couldn't let go. He pulled the gear right off the bench to unp= lug it because he said he could feel his heart start fibrillating.

Electricity is both wonderful and dreadful - depends on what you're doi= ng :-).

--=20 It's turtles, all the way down

[Morris Dovey]

| Those smoke-eaters have a bit of a distorted view, but caution may | be embellished to everyone's advantage.

I wasn't ever much of a smoke-eater, but was once sent back to the engine to get a fire axe and "make a door" from one burning room to another. We'd been told that the meter had been pulled (no power to building) and the captain pointed to where he wanted the passage. No dilly-dallying on my part - I swung the axe through the wall but couldn't pull it back. Seems I'd managed to weld the axe head to the innards of a (live) breaker box. Hardly strange that after thirty years I still feel a particular fondness for fiberglass handles...

A couple of years later at an apartment file yours truly (ex-paratrooper but still afraid of heghts) was sent to the basement to do something - I can't remember what - and had gotten to about the middle of the floor when I realized the basement lights were all on and that the clothes driers were all sitting in more than knee-deep water with detergent boxes floating all around. Water was still pouring into the basement from hoses upstairs as I (ever so carefully!) turned around and made haste slowly back to the stairs hoping that my boots wouldn't leak and that I'd get to the stairs before the water got deeper than my boot tops.

This kind of stuff does tend to give one a distorted view.

-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA

[Pat Barber]

A few years back a friend was running a shrimp boat and they took a lightning strike on the main radio antenna.

It blew the VHF radio completely out of the wheelhouse through the windshield.

There was a few pair of shorts that needed to be replaced that day.

Larry Blanchard wrote:

[Lew Hodgett]

Pat Barber wrote: > A few years back a friend was running a shrimp boat > and they took a lightning strike on the main > radio antenna. >

I call that a lucky shrimp boat crew.

Rather than just taking out the radio, that strike could just as easily have holed the boat.

Lew

[Mark & Juanita]

So, do boats benefit from lightning rods? Seems like the hazard for boats in storms is pretty high.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[charlie]

depends upon who you ask. some say they attract hits, causing further damage, some say they protect in a cone shaped area, so for powerboats, it has to be pretty high up. sailboats have a builtin lightning rod :)

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regards, charlie cave creek, az

[Robatoy]

[snip]sailboats have a builtin lightning rod :)

Quite a few ultra-whacka-doodle fundies didn't think it was right to have a lightning rod on a church steeple. Some of them came around to a different way of thinking when it started to cost them money to keep rebuilding. A whacky bunch, really.

I don't think lightning is an issue of faith. It's pretty well been demonstrated that if it is a religious thing, it's pretty random. Quite few golfers get hit...in which I see the (5-) irony.