A cell-phone tower worker gets caught in power lines in Fresno, and the rescue is caught on camera. PG&E called it a very fortunate situation because the man’s mechanical lift equipment did touch a live power line and he was able to walk away.
Boyles said it all started around 10am on Thursday morning. The man was up working on a cell phone tower near Copper and Maple in Northeast Fresno, and his lift somehow came into contact with a power line.
The man was taken to the hospital, and the Fresno Fire Department and American Ambulance were on scene to make sure he was able to get from his bucket to PG&E’s, and down to safely. After more than two hours trapped around forty feet above the ground, the worker was removed from his crane into PG&E’s.
PG&E Spokesman Denny Boyles said, “Our bucket got right next to their bucket, our operator attached a safety line to the worker and he was able to just walk between the two buckets.”
“This is a 115,000 volt transmission line that serves north, basically Northwest Fresno,” stated Boyles.
Boyles said it took a little more than two hours to cut the power in that line, and get one of their employees up to help.
He said, “We work with companies to make sure that they know how to operate lifts around power lines. We do that training constantly, so it’s just a very fortunate situation that the worker we all saw was able to walk out of their lift into ours.”
The worker is employed by a communications company. The company did not want to comment on the incident.
Boyles said when they cut power to the line, there may have been a momentary loss of power or a flicker, but there were no outages to any customers.
PG&E reminds, people should always be cautious when working around power lines.