The following are some of the serious incidents related to electric work in 2013:
An electrical troubleshooter had to have his hand and forearm amputated when on June 4, 2013 he reached into a capacitor bank enclosure and made contact with a loose 7.2kV jumper. He was not wearing rubber gloves and there were no protective barriers in the cabinet to insulate or isolate him from the live parts. Bystanders pulled him from the enclosure after the contact explosion.
A crew replacing a leaking pad mount transformer was involved in a phase-to-ground arc flash while in the process of moving a dead break elbow from a parking stand to a “J-bar”. The foreman sustained first degree flash burns to the neck and face, and second degree flash burns to the left forearm. Neither he nor the journeyman was wearing required rubber gloves and sleeves, or FR clothing.
On Sunday, Dec. 8, 2013, at approximately 8:25 a.m., a Cableman with 34 years of company experience located in the San Francisco Division sustained burns while working on a sub-surface transformer. Preliminary indications are that the employee attempted to reset a sub-surface transformer secondary breaker during an outage when the transformer catastrophically failed. The employee was treated for smoke inhalation and minor burns to his face and hands. The employee was admitted into San Francisco General Hospital where he was treated for his injuries.
A journey lineman was attempting to install a glass meter cover on a 480V meter base that was energized. As he was installing the metal ring, the cover slipped and the ring went into the hub, making contact with the energized meter lugs, causing a flash which resulted in the lineman receiving burns to both hands. The lineman did not have his rubber gloves on while working on the energized meter base which contributed to the seriousness of his injuries.