Safety Message: Homeowner receives shock from 115,000-volt power line

"Beachcomber" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@netnews.comcast.net...

Even the professional trimmers occasionally bite it, but this fellow took some enormous chances. This fellow cut the top out of the tree, a very tall fir, and the cut didn't make it all the way through. It tipped over with some of the trunk section still attached. The upper part fell contacting the power lines. He was in the tree just below the cut he had made. He remained conscious, and asked people on the ground to call 911. When emergency crews began to arrive no one would climb the tree because of the close proximity to the power lines. The top section had remained attached to the tree, and was very close to the still live line. The first responders called the power company, and waited until crews had arrived, and shut off the power. The fire department called in a special ariel rescue team, and they rigged to lower him to the ground after attaching him to a back board. He suffered second, and third degree burns over the majority of his body, and paramedics suspected other internal injuries. He remained conscious from injury, to some point during the Life ride to the hospital when he blacked out. The time from injury to the beginning of the flight was in excess of two hours. He was suffering immensely during the rescue as evidenced by the screaming audible on the news coverage. People on the ground indicated that the flash, and ball of fire at the time of power line contact was quite large, and bright even though it was daylight at the time.

According to news coverage he hasn't died yet, but due to privacy concerns the hospital wouldn't release information on his condition.

Louis--

********************************************* Remove the two fish in address to respond

Power not lost to neighbor hood? 115KV line? Huh?

I think more than just a "neighborhood" would have gone down!

Stupid is as stupid does. 115kv lines are at least 30 feet in the air to the bottom phase. What a maroon. I would be hard pressed getting near 115kv in a bucket truck. I have worked on 69kv and less for 30 years, not interested in any higher voltages. I was in a 230kv sub station in Mexico where the bottom phase was like 15-20 feet off the ground. I stood at the gate and used the zoom on the camera for what I needed. It is sad that this happened, it also sad that he is that cheap.

I live in a forest where there are 150 to 200 foot fir trees and they have a tendancy, on the west coast, to become diseased. These trees are quite dangerous to remove even when there are NO power lines. They have been known to snap right off when being cut down. I watched a professional remove one here that was 150 feet and he used an old PG&E crane. He would connect a large cable to the piece he was trying to remove and keep it taught so it would fall in the correct direction. When those pieces hit the ground, the whole house shakes. I saw on 3 foot long by 3 foot wide piece hit the ground and bury itself about half way in. Fir trees are definitely not a job for an amatuer to remove! Though I suspect we won't have to tell this to the guy that got the 115K jolt!!!..........Happy Holidays to All....Ross

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 10:20:26 -0700, "SQLit" Gave us:

What I want to know is how did a tree EVER become allowed to grow so near such a high potential.

Bullshit. If it was near trees, it wasn't a 115kV line.

You are an idiot. Take a 100 foot right of way, grow a 200foot tree at the edge...ta da. And that is on level ground. Put the scenario on a hillside and a short tree can fall into the line while growing outside of the right of way.

Perhaps you should read the report about the recent northeast blackout. Trees growing into high voltage lines was one of the major causes.

Charles Perry P.E.

[snip]

Right. And 115kV lines are quite common just running along public roads. Some people might be thinking of dedicated rights of way, but in my neighborhood, the 115kV (and 230kV) line are just built over the local distribution lines. In some cases the distance from the line to the edge of the right of way is 10 feet.

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 13:56:58 -0500, "Charles Perry" Gave us:

No, I am not.

Still sounds like lackadaisical poor management to me.

Please provide source of your info. Nothing in any of the online Oregon newspapers. Your saying his name was "Kregg" ?

?????

The original story has no more details, but was posted on kgw.com at this address on Saturday 12/19/03:

I am familiar with these lines and they are indeed 115,000 volts circuits on wooden pole structures. In this part of Oregon, the right-of-way often is literally adjacent to private residential lots which is the case here and there are a lot of tall pine trees everywhere which can cause potential problems.

This was near a major PGE substation with similar multiple incoming high voltage lines and I'm sure they were able to switch over to another feed when they de-engergized these lines to remove the man as there was no widespread power outage in this area.

Beachcomber

PGE has been doing a very good job of putting breakers in all of their substations high side switchgear. (Replacing fuses or circuit switchers). The motive is that in many cases the load has grown to high for proper selectivity on the protective relays feeding the sub-transmission lines. When they originally upgraded to 115kV 25 to 40 years ago they made most of their sub-transmission system into loops so that any one substation has at least two feeds to improve repair time. These two combine such that a loss of a single 115kV line results in nothing more than blinking lights to their customers.

Matthew

Natural selection at work.

Beachcomber wrote:

I imagine this will add a few bucks to everyone's power bill when the homeowner's family sues and that whacky 9th circuit actually hears the case.

message

How so? A utility has no legal right to trim trees outside of its right of way. You cannot force a property owner to let you trim a tree that is growing outside of the right of way. What would you have management do? Pray that trees don't grow so tall?

Try the real world for a change of pace. It is quite interesting.

Charles Perry P.E.

[snip]

We obtain tree trimming easements before building lines in these locations. I'm not sure what practices are followed elsewhere. Aside from that, tree trimming is still a sensitive subject with many people and in some cases (even with easements) people get emotional over trees and the political heat isn't worth the effort. And its something that (some) utilities figure they can economize on when times get tough or the stockholders get greedy.

But the problem put forth in the original post is that a utility can't stop a property owner from cutting his own trees within such an easement. Whether that property owner knows what he is doing or not.

Since last Fall when we lost power for several days I have become MUCH more observant of utility right-of-ways and such.

One thing I notice is that the very process of creating the clear zones encourages the trees on either side to lean in. This happens on roads also. On some two lane roads the trees on either side bend over almost enough for the trunks to touch. What this means is that it is difficult to cut down a tree WITHOUT it hitting the utility lines.

It's easy to spot places where trees hae been permitted to grow under the local high voltage wires (which I was told were 19.8 kv phase to ground). In one spot you can see a brown tops of some pine trees. They pick up enough juice to stop growing up but not enough to trip out the line.

Since the telephone cables are much stronger than the power lines, the telephone company seems to not care! I have seen several places where a tree is being held up by the telephone cable. So long as the cable isn't actually broken, why "fix" it?

FPL seems pretty aggressive in cutting trees near their primaries here in SW Fla.

Yep

tbh

The result of that is our lights are not out for 2 weeks everytime we have a little squall. I never hesitate to compliment the great job FPL does around here.