RE: Grim Safety Reminder

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Basura, Brian by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <brian.basura-at-unistudios-dot-com>

I arrived at a converter station shortly after one of the 2,000amp
500,000vdc lines decided to arc over a 15' long feed-through where it
entered the building. Parts of the insulator were imbedded in the asphalt
30-feet away but the thing I remember the most was the three holes burned
in the metal building. I was told the first one was the initial failure and
the other two were caused by the automatic systems trying to re-start the
line and blow the short off.  BTW - These two lines now carry plus and
minus 500,000vdc -at- 3,200 amps. That's a whopping 3200 mega-watts!!!

A couple opportunities have arisen where I was tempted to liberate a pig in
distress. It only took a moment for me to remembered the burned building
and the automatic restarts. Needless to say, I steer clear of all downed
lines and let dead pigs be...

Regards,
Brian B. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 4:12 PM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: RE: Grim Safety Reminder


Original poster: "David Thomson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<dave-at-volantis-dot-org>

>The utility shut it off soon, but then when they turned it back on, it made
a plasma blue fireball about 6 to 8 ft. in daimeter with a noise like a
small atomic bomb!

I too have seen one of these 6 to 8ft diameter plasma blue fireballs.  I was
walking along a highway in the fall and noticed a branch had fallen off a
tree and extended across all three 14KV power lines.  The branch was
sparking at the two outer lines.  I was standing directly underneath looking
up.  Since this was directly in front of a fuel storage company, I went in
to tell the lady at the desk to have the power company shut off the main
power before the lines blew.  She scoffed at me.  I said "OK, It's not my
fuel company." and opened the door to leave.  Just as I opened the door I
heard the loud explosion and happened to be looking at the line.  This was
broad daylight but the blue plasma ball was quite bright and well defined.
What caught my interest though was that the explosion occurred midway
between poles.  One half of one wire immediately fell to the ground, the
other wire remained suspended in the air while the blue plasma ball raced
toward one of the telephone poles.

Looking around at the lady behind the counter, she immediately said, "OK,
I'm calling them now."  I can remember thinking very critically about her
judgment.

Somehow the line managed to reach the ground nearly directly below the
explosion.  Within a few feet of where I was standing the sand and gravel
had fused into glass.

I had missed my departure flight from this world by about 70 seconds.

Dave