Arc Flash Underground Cable Explosion

[codeman883]

Haha Burn19ballz i was gonna say the samething! Lol,. There all about perfection but hell look who fucked things up lol

[macssvt]

@bart hey fool, if ignorant people would follow the correct construction safety procedures this would have never happened. Take an OSHA safety class and learn something douchebag!

[iowacableguy]

@macssvt This happens all the time. I work in the directional drilling field and can say that over the past ten years (since utility owners started contracting out the locating of their lines) it has gotten horrible. I can't even put a number to the unmarked and mis-marked lines I've encountered. OSHA has nothing to do with it, when you pay some guy from a temp agency 9.00 an hour to mark crucial lines, this is what you get.

[sk8er4ever0101]

I guess they didn't call JULIE :(

[burn19ballz]

that's why you shouldn't hire illegal immigrants.

[TheAlex5552]

Disregard my last post; after viewing the video again I saw a man come out of the trench he probably was cutting a cable thinking it was died. Or jackhammering through a cable covered with pc pipe and concrete thinking it was a rock, I did see a compressor hose. Nevertheless, I think it was the fault of the supervisor and engineer.

[TheAlex5552]

There should have been some kind of pc pipe around the cables and sometimes the pips are covered with concrete It was probably a misunderstanding between the laborer and operator because I don’t think someone would cut a pipe just like that most likely the cable was cut by the backhoe and then they backed it up to be safe.

[rybaluc]

@CGrasser3613310730 I don't know how it is in your country, but when some digging is needed in my country there is mandatory to explore maps of underground networks+locate. In some cases we were able to get records of pipes even from 19th century. When i have to dig on my land, i have to make prove of existency or no existency of networks under my land.

Shit sometimes happens. Especially when many networks crosses. For example when plumbers fixed water leakage they cutted optical cables nearby

[xmas4all]

Mexicants



[dedflesh]

ill bet a high ranking engineer mapped out that dig

[BankaiIchigo12345]

Wish this had sound to go with it.

[bertyUK]

Typical fucking monkeys.

No-one has a clue who does what and where OR HOW.

No-one can sack the useless cunts otherwise their union will bring the entire company down.

Isn't modern life great.

[digitalbroadcaster]

"Ah! Okay, it looks like it's gone out. Lower me down on the rear bucket and pat it down with it. I'll help keep the fire under control by peeing on it".

[Electricienbatard]

hope they got fired !! get the hell out of there and call electric company a holes

[racebends]

The only thing they did wright was having 2 exits out of the hole. Let your check be your guide to down the road electric.

[DOLRED]

What they are saying? "Hey Joe, get the sticks and the marshmellows."

[heavycash24]

What they needed was an escort. Nerc certified of coarse

[MoreLikeCappuccino]

1:07

"Fuck this job I QUIT! Whos with me?"

-Everybody walks away with a cool face on-

[macssvt]

Energizzzzzzzzzzed!!!

[bartekjaskula]

@macssvt this is NOT FUNNY ...somebody can die idiot

[jasowink]

i like that way they walk away like ... I didnt do it

[MrFITHsleezy]

see what happens when you let mexicans play with power?

[kc5cxu]

@MrFITHsleezy haha thats a good one.



[506jimbob]

thats what you get for cooking bacon in a hole!

[caveman175]

mmmmmmmm laid off.

[dronai]

Can't belive that guy crawled out of there alive !

[Testiesful]

Where's the safety protocols?

[flamesecure]

well done

[alderaforall]

break time

[OK2BCK]

doesn't the automatic breaker try to restore the power like 3 times in the row before it shuts down? I gues that might be why the arc came back.

[G0IFI]

Guy at a local power station some years ago was sawing through some 3 phase underground lines, sadly they weren't isolated as he had thought and the hacksaw blade went through the armour and into a phase, whereupon the blade vaporised, literally leaving two curled bits of carbon at either end of the saw. The guy emerged, shaken but alive, with his hair on end and his face blackened, still holding the saw. His mates couldn't help but laugh, partly with relief. Could've been very much worse.

[wally49909]

i wonder what'll happen if i cut this...OH SHIT!!!maybe i shouldn't have cut that...lol

[dbudge218]

and the delayed flash was the auto-recloser switch kicking in. this usually does this 3 times before completely shutting a network down. so if you ever cause a flash like this it's probably best to just get the fuck well away from it however tempting the sight of the aftermath may be. electric arcs can also cause blindness. powerful stuff

[dbudge218]

until you open the ground up you can never truly determine what is underneath the surface whether you have Cable Avoidance Tools or not. C.A.Ts don't alway show up HV cable as the current passing through it is not at the same level as a Low voltage cable. drawings of course always give a good idea, but disc-cutters should be used strictly for cutting the surface of the footpath and nothing else. you don't use it when you're already 2 foot deep anyway!!!

[boundaryzero]

whats next?

"we should get a water hose to put out the flames!"

[R3MUS2007]

Bet that guy was like Ooops, Did I do that?!? LOL

[bigdj3]

Anyone bring the hotdogs?

[tatanoski666]

ohh shiett there was more juice left in he line

[made4speed1]

iv'e dug plenty of underground and whether they mark them or not you will always find something they missed. pretty easy to find considering it turns from dirt to sand if it was put in right with tape on top. and it's in conduit on top of that. however depending when and where this is you can find direct burial cable in dirt with no caution tape on top makes for a headache especially since it doesn't have to flow in nice curves or a straight line iv'e seen them put loopes in the line underground

[ShaunAube1]

@made4speed1 Dam right...And gas lines too people think its fun to run a backho.. Ok dig down and around a 20 inch gas line an tell me its fun and 60% of the time the city says theres nothing there when there is

[Moparskunk]

That's normal dipshit union workers for ya.

[riclen123]

@Moparskunk ya cause you scab morons never hit anything !

[chooch68]

@Moparskunk Only an idiot would buy a Dodge, Plymouth or Chrysler.

[Mujahid1977]

These guys seem perfect fit to be CEO's or MDs of utility companies and get paid in gazillions !!!

[tambo3lite]

fired,fired, and fired

[McDaedelus]

They almost got taken out by the recloser... Nasty.

We had a contractor do a better trick though; cut through an 11kV steel wire armour cable with a pruning saw, while live... Then someone tried to steal an energised cable, using a hacksaw. We found the hacksaw, but no trace of the aspiring thief!

[rysliv]

they shuld of turned it off?

[Nnovata]

that's how a mexican worker would do it

[jubaj2010]

@Nnovata Now is better if them or you apply LoToTo before any work, do you know what is it?

[Nnovata]

@jubaj2010 No I don´t know what is that. What it is?

[jubaj2010]

@jubaj2010 Simply: Lock out, Tag out, Try out, thats the real way mexican people do anything now, and you must to know: no body change a bulb with the ligth turned on, if somebady does must be crazy or hero, usually heroes dies.

Best regards, and impulse LoToTo, i swear: must seve lifes ;)

[riclen123]

@jubaj2010 " The real way mexican people do anything" lol! So progressive! hows your space program going?

[jubaj2010]

@riclen123 I only spoke about good safety practices I learn working in Lafarge gypsum and empowering my work team, that keep me alive, and the good safety practices that keep you alive is of course, more important than any spacial program or racist program, or war intrusion program, or false cooperation program- etc I think, so, I respect to your opinion, because it is only that, just recovered from the spam to come back in ...

[TheSqeeek]

@riclen123 Like Americans have never done anything stupid around power lines... I knew of a guy that touched a 55k transformer bus with his bare hand. He was very white... well, not anymore...

[seatboi]

@riclen123 YEAH! I rented a 110 year old downtown building from some Mexicans once that they had re-wired! 14 guage wire poked in the back holes of the outlets running 150 feet from the main box with NO breakers! Almost burnt the place down 3 or 4 times, then, I RE-wired it to CODE & took it off my rent! They weren't too happy! Oh, yeah, and let's not forget thier plumbing in the bathroom! The toilet sat on a 6" wood "pedestal" & when u flushed it, it would go right into the tub! 2" PVC!!

[invista360]

I saw a similar incident inside an American Express building.

A pipe fitter saw cut a 8'x8' section of concrete in the building, when the digging became hard he used his jack hammer. The jack hammer got stuck. When he shoveled the dirt away he found he had penetrated a 4" distribution conduit and had parted 4160Volt cables parallel with his 4" spade bit.. Had the bit been rotated any more and he would have had a phase to phase explosion.

Very expensive repair in this situation.

[TheMoses35]

The solution is called a hydrovac

[russdonruss]

This is 100% the cutter's fault. Whoever cut the line is responsible for the damage.  There is markout in the street--you can see it in the foreground, so the utilities have been marked. After that, it becomes the excavator's responsibility to make sure they dig carefully. It looks like they were hand-digging around the cables (which they probably found with that backhoe) and somehow damaged them. Maybe the hoe hit it, and when they tried to expose it with a shovel they grounded it out.

[bighands69]

The truth of the matter is that society has not placed technical solutions to these problems.

blaming people will not stop future problems like this.

[jiakenmin]

In California we have a a thing called a Underground Service Alert. If you're going to break ground, a USA is issued. Any company that owns an underground cable in the area is supposed to spraypaint the ground showing where the cable is. If they don't, massive fines. If that video was shot in CA, some power utility would get fined up the ass.

[bighands69]

what you have stated is a regulation and practice.

but it is not a technical solution. When human judgement and actions are required the error rate increases.

the only way to lower the error rate is a technical solution.

A fine will only work after the event not before.

[croakerchoker504]

those guys are dumb, lets go see what that was.. ohhhh shit!!! its not over!!!

[faackoof]

@croakerchoker504 that's cause their city workers and not electricians. all they have is a grade 10 education

[metermatch]

@faackoof I've got news for you. The City workers are the most highly trained and experienced ones. (LA DWP). You might try making it through the 3 year EDMT training program without failing before shooting off your mouth. Other utilities gladly hire "City" linemen. The contractors have to have an experienced City worker be with them at all times (a "safety observer") to make sure they don't get into anything bad. And a City worker would have placed a bid to clear up the cable.

[amper0003]

@croakerchoker504 Their names were Pedro, Juan and Ramon..

[swatka2580]

@livefreeinuk1

Can I ask you why you had to empathize that it was an irish builder? Anybody can make a mistake and " stupid Irish builders " built most of the houses built in England during the 1900's and they seem to be still standing? Save your ignorant stereotypes for people who are stupid enough to acknowledge you.

[ljmike1204]

as homer simpson whood say DOHHH XD i want to see somthing like that for real looks cool but the are stupid to get closer

[bbertens]

They survey for underground electrical cables too.

[soccerstylez8705]

its the cutters fault. most surveys arn't for electrical services, its for communication and other utilities. you take extra procautions when you get certain depth, and areas around streets and buildings. tread softly

[mgreene1967]

Blame it on the surveyor, providing that they had that area of construction surveyed and painted out. This needs to be done before any excavation can be done especially cutting!

[IC2720]

Not the surveyor, it's the fault of the locating service, OR, the guys doing the digging without locating the lines first.

[livefreeinuk1]

it happened near my house in london uklast week 11kv cable dug up by irish builder, enough said

[bossou5555]

u know the copper turns into vapor.the bus bars r desing to melt, thats why the fire is minimized.

[chucklezhaha]

Bus bars are not designed to melt.

[Mrpsychotehpyro]

Hmm...now i finally know how this looks, thanks...my father once told me about a similar accident he witnessed when he was a boy.....

[talktoyourself]

lololol Love how there like, oh yeah, what idiot did this, sure wasn't us! Dumb pedestrians.

[wallpaperkilla]

idiots

[shadynebey]

...And a Prius drives by.  Hahahahaha...

[macssvt]

12KV....Wish there was something left of the SawZall blade they vaporized!

[Erzahler]

What the hell were they doing cutting through a live, high-tension electrical cable like that? What were they thinking??

[tgrigsby7]

It would have been high voltage, but not high tension. You're thinking of the 50k volt long distance transmission lines on towers. But yeah, the question still stands: Someone didn't think about turning off the juice first?

[rawtorque]

Call for a locate BEFORE you dig!

[mturgeon2]

Ah yes this reminds me when a construction crew dug right through a gas main just a block from my house. OOPS!

[Banditman76]

That'll be contractors hitting an HV cable then!!

[thariell]

q  merda

[thariell]

q merda

[yodhe]

oops