Posted on 08/26/2024 9:17:24 AM PDT by Signalman
Five swimmers in Indiana were electrocuted in what police described as a "freak accident" in a swimming pool Sunday afternoon.
Officers, fire and medical personnel responded to a home in the 2600 block of High St. just after 2:30 p.m. in the town of Logansport, Indiana, police said.
Police said five people – including two adults and three juveniles – were transported to local hospitals for their injuries.
Medical personnel transported two of the juveniles to different hospitals for further treatment.
A spokesperson for the Logansport Police Department described the incident to Indianapolis’ FOX 59 as a "freak accident."
Police determined that a wire on a pool pump had been pinched, causing a protective cover to break. The exposed wire made contact with the pool water and shocked the five swimmers, according to the station.
Logansport is located in Northern Indiana, about a 90-minute drive north of Indianapolis.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I was sort of wondering about that. If no one died, no one got electrocuted. Sounds like they got shocked.
Electrocuted means killed by electricity. You take the electrocuted to the morgue not the hospital. Idiot writer.
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yup, I see the word electrocuted used all the time to describe someone getting shocked. Electrocuted and executed have the same ending, figuratively and literally.
electrocuted generally, if not always, means shocked to death. Thankfully, all these survived. And most likely proper grounding of the pump equipment would have tripped the breaker even without GFI
This happened to my sister when she bought a home with an inground pool.
Electrician wired things incorrectly, causing a current to flow through the water.
The next one came out and MacGyvered the thing, despite my sister insisting she wanted everything to code.
She had to toss him off the job and hired a 3rd electrician. He tore out the garbage work and redid everything to code. No more shocks in the water.
“...electrocuted while enjoying...”
seems to be lacking any literary sensibility. or something.
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If electrocution is inevitable, why not enjoy it, I presume.
Are you shocked (bad pun intended)? The quality of today's journalism is awful.
These people were shocked, not electrocuted (assuming they all survive their hospital trip).
But was it verified that they were enjoying it, or is it speculative journalism?
Hope they’re okay, better than a few trees around here that have been hit by lightning, now with charcoal inside.
Life finds a way when the squirrels move in, so there’s that.
No one was electrocuted as no one died.
“A GFCI breaker should have prevented this accident”
Not if they were entirely in the water. To trip the GFCI they’d have to be, say, holding onto a railing outside the pool that was grounded.
Actually, if they were wholly in the water, I’d think the shock would be mild, like a tingle.
Wasn’t this a plot line in “Ozark”?
There’s a reason we have code.
I went to a website once were a guy was telling people how to DIY a 240 VAC charging outlet for an EV. He was not aware of the fact that his “technique” would only work if the two 120 VAC were 180 out of phase. Otherwise you get 0 Volts out. He was advising plugging a Toyota 120 VAC charging adapter into a 240 supply.
Furthermore, there was no scope for a GFI which seems precarious given the chance of a fault in wet weather, even inside a garage. The guy’s advice was so bad, and his technique so shoddy that I flagged it to youTube. I don’t wanna be a Karen, but anyone taking his advice is placing themselves in jeopardy. If their garage burns down, Toyota can point to the miswired outlet used for charging, so legal as well as mortal jeopardy.
I noticed that myself, and that is the use I am familiar with, but google's online dictionary includes the meaning "injured" by electricity.
I imagine that if any current whatsoever returned to earth via water, and it would, there would be an imbalance between supply (hot) and return (neutral). A 5 milliamp imbalance should be all it takes to trip the GFI. A GFI will not work if you put a fork in an outlet, since the current would be balanced, but that’s what the breaker is for. The instant the supply, or neutral, came into contact with water, it would trip. If you drop an extension cord plugged into a GFI protected circuit in water with a path to ground, it should trip, because some of the current will return via the ground path. If you only immerse the ground cord with a load connected to the circuit, it should trip, again because of the imbalance.
Thanks, I was thinking the same.
“if any current whatsoever returned to earth via water ...”
If that happened at more than 5 milliamps then the GFCI would trip whether or not someone was in the pool, correct?
Absolutely. The GFI has a small transformer that is powered in opposite directions by the supply and return current. Think of a tug-of-war. Ideally there would be no output if the current were balanced. The slightest imbalance triggers it, much the same way a circuit breaker is tripped. (A circuit breaker senses over current in the supply line.)
The five milliamp threshold is lower than the level of current that poses a risk to healthy individuals.
Comments at the bottom are interesting and enlightening.
Electric shock treatments, right out of Psyc 101 in the 60’s. You get happy because you lose your bad memories. Take your driver’s license to your appointment so you can find your way home when you forget your own name.
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