Electrical fire

[English Bloke]

What's with the firefighter in full fire-suit hanging back and letting the guy in T-shirt and jeans investigate the flames?? I bet that's not in the manual. Great pictures by the way...

[klingon warrior]

Must have been made by Lucas, eh?

That would be Lucas, Lord of Darkness, correct?

[Piper]

Being a troubleshooter for an electric utility company, those scenes are old hat to me. Weather can wreak havoc on equipment, and sometimes it seems as if the electric gods get restive, and blow things up just to entertain themselves. Two nights ago I spent some time hanging by the seat of my pants off of a pole behind some houses in order to cut a pole mounted transformer clear after lightning had made a mess of things. Obviously my job does not lend itself to working kilted.
The fireman who's hanging back while the guy in t shirt and jeans checks things out is following procedure. Police and fire personnel are taught to stay clear of utility equipment until we check things out and tell them its' safe. Since the guy in the hard hat is only wearing a t shirt, I'm assuming he already received confirmation that the primary circuit was locked out. If not, he's a damned fool. There's a lot more protective gear required if you're opening live equipment, especially if it's in trouble.

[Jerry]

Back before I retired, I was attending a safety tyraining class at the plant training center There was a brilliant white flash similar to the descriptions I've heard of nuclear explosions, almost concurrently with a very loud ZZZZZBOOM!. All of the lights went out. We walked to the front door to see what was happening. The high winds that day 50mph or more had somehow caused two 4160 lines to cross phase. I went back inside and called the plant emergency brigade. All they could do when they arrived was to keep everyone away from the area and await the power company trucks.It shut the plant down. I got some pretty good OT that night, standing by to restart the plant. When I left at midnight, the power company was just restoring power, so the next technician got all of the real work.

[tyger]

Durn those squirrels!

[cessna152towser]

Looks like a bit of an adventure. Good that it was an outdoor installation and that nobody was hurt. I dread the thought of an electrical fire in the air - once I had a flap motor overrun on the approach to our local airport when flying solo in a Cessna plane, it went straight to full flap despite second stage being selected, luckily I realised what was happening and quickly applied more power and adjusted the trim and managed to land safely. It was only after I was safely on the ground that I smelt that distinctive burning smell of an electrical fire.

[Flag Folder]

I have spent so much time on XMTS these last 4 weeks that I expected to see the kilted fire department in the pictures. Took me a moment to realize that the pictures were odd because no one was kilted.

Bruce

:ootd:

[Piper]

Durn those squirrels!

You're in the business too, huh?
I actually had 3 jobs at the same pad mounted, underground fed transformer where squirrels got inside and shorted across the primary side. Its' a common occurence on the overhead system, but I'd never run across it in the underground before. After the first one, I plugged all the spare ductwork, thinking it had crawled in that way. Took two more toasted tree rats before I found the small hole at the back corner of the tranformer that they crawled in through.

[tyger]

Dumb squirrels, don't know that they are supposed to be ground squirrels, not grounded squirrels. Fact is, they get into stuff worse than rats. They wrecked my bass boat seats this winter: I caught one making a not-fast-enough exit.