Posted on 08/20/2006 10:58:31 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
(AP) MERRILL, Wis. Authorities say a man reportedly trying to reconnect electrical service to a home was hit with 14,400 volts of electricity.
The Lincoln County Sheriff's Department says the 36-year-old man then fell 30 feet from a ladder into the back of a truck.
The Wausau man is in critical condition Sunday at the burn unit of University of Wisconsin-Madison Hospital.
Authorities believe that Saturday he was attempting to illegally connect electrical service at a home in the Town of Corning.
Wisconsin Public Service Corporation had shut off power to the home earlier in the week due to nonpayment. The man did not live there.
The sheriff's office says the man was up on a ladder and somehow made contact with the line. That's when he fell.
WPS was called to the scene to resecure the electrical line. The company's engineers are investigating.
Green Bay-based WPS serves 442,000 electric and 289,000 natural gas customers in Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Do you think he will still get fined by the power company?
If you're gonna work it hot it's good to remember the rubber gloves.
Sounds like the zot already occurred. You are IATZ. The good news is that he apparently failed to direct 14,400 volts into his home.
What are the odds that this guy wasnt a Union electrician?
*snicker*
"IB4TZ?"
Not unless you posted this before he zotted himself.
There's nothing to investigate. Looks like the editor forgot to delete a standard bullet statement from the press release template.
Uffda! I guess this guy wasn't an electrician, then? It's not really all that hard to hook up a residential service. It's just a good thing he didn't get that HV line connected to the house, or there wouldn't be a house.
I grew up believing that "electrocuted" meant one had died, and therefore could not be in "critical condition." Perhaps the author meant "sever electrical shock."
Sounds like a "Cut at the pole" disconnect for non payment. Most likely for not allowing access to the property to disconnect at the meter.
Idiot tried to reconnect at the tub.
It's like saying one was executed, but is in critical condition.
If you watch how electrical service guys deal with hot lines, it's rubber sleeves up to the shoulder and wood stick with hook on it. That's how they close those pole breakers.
One of the ongoing highlights of constant training is total respect for any voltage.
Even "ordinary" voltages in a panel box can deliver transformer voltage and current in the thousands... The resulting "explosion" vaporizes metal.
Forget "rubber" gloves. Gloves and other tools and equipment for working on electrical equipment come in a bewildering array of "classes", and have expiration dates.
Any inexperienced person working on anything beyond household voltages is a ready-made "Darwin Award" candidate.
I would bet he was trying to reconnect the house service leads back to the Transformer low side taps (220 volts) However, those high side taps (4800 to 14,200 volts) are right nearby on the tub (usually on top vs low side taps on the side) and consequently he was blasted by them.
Extremely lucky that he fell clear when contact was made. He would have looked like a burned chicken leg dangling up there if he didn't.
Hey hold my beer and watch this.
If a person is electrocuted they are dead. It's not something that is survived.
I'd be miffed too.
This man will sue and probably win.
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