Bucket truck & Power lines - multiple house fires

Bucket truck electrical grounding and multiple building fires -
This video was shown during electrical safety for emergency responders course in Douglas County Washington. The video is dated but amazing. Worth a look.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• bucket
• truck
• power
• lines
• electrocution
• house
• fires
• electrical
• grounding
• fire
• accident
• boom
• shocking

[Trotskysghost]

I was an electrican's apprentice that saw something similar happen; it took the fire dept. 80+ rings to get a response from the utility's emergency hotline and an hour after that for someone to come out and shut it off. In the meantime, the Fire Dept. put out fires around the damaged equipment, but wouldn't go near the source until it was de-energized. The cause was an un-used ground lug that nicked a phase conductor in the energized panel while we were examining an existing installation.

[erok2020]

Wow - thanks for the response. In this video it is amazing to see how long it takes to get the power turned off...

Thanks for the post!

erok

[chickadee2]

How many house caught fire?

[erok2020]

The vid shows two that caught fire.. but there were more. The was trying to ground thru any source and unfortunately it was through the customer homes along that street.

[1nm1]

Feel sorry for the people, but that was an awesome video. Why did it take so long to turn it off?? Also, what happened to the houses???

[erok2020]

From what I remember from the course instructor, they could not turn the power off (Obvisouly). I am not sure exactly why. How frustrating... I am sure the people wholost their homes probably sued the electrial company. Thanks for your comment

[linemanbill]

Probably close to the sub . The sub saw it as load not a fault , won't trip breakers then.

[16myMari]

love you mary its Aaron

[16myMari]

hi mary its Aaron

[Homegrown174]

Bad Day to be with that company

[daddo3123]

This was caused by an Asplundh Tree trimming crew. They were trimming the hi-line with a Hi-Ranger and the elbow of the lift broke a limb off and fell onto the lines. This should have blown fuses close to the short, but didn't. Lots of appliances, televisions and main panels burnt up and Baltimore Gas and Electric had to put out some serious money. It melted vinyl siding, shot gutter spikes out of the fascia and all types of crazy shit.

I trimmed this same line out five years after this.

[matteng1997]

Im surprised the lines didnt burn themselves in half before they even shut off the power

[RhinoVirus21]

Very High fault current when your close to a sub. FYI burning up bucket trucks is a good way to end a line career........

[maxell07c0]

Now that's a powerful sound

[mrcheesesmith]

Glad i don't have to pay that power bill.

[rgbolster3]

@melevy becuz of the proximity of the sub and the level of fault current there is no jumping up and shutting it down. we hate for anything like this to happen but we have to follow safety procedures that keep us and the public as safe as possible.