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O.T. Lucky accident

JimmyD

Aluminum
Joined
May 10, 2006
Location
Garrett , Indiana
Wanted to pass this on after the lawn mower/children post, went to work on Thurs.,as I was walking into the building I heard a loud BAM from down the street at a foundry followed by sirens etc. Come to find out an elec. contractor we all know fell off a ladder and landed on a 480v transformer,shorting it out.The last I heard he was to be released from the Hos. today.Best part of the story? Before the fall/jolt he had an irregular heartbeat , while being checked out at the hos. it was discovered that he now has regular rythim . Pretty Lucky Huh?
 
He's an incredibly lucky man.

My father was electrocuted when I was about 5 yrs old, maybe '63 or '64. A construction job, he was in contact with a crane boom when it swung into some high tension lines. It effectively killed him on the spot. Operator was unharmed.

Dad was burned over 75% of his body. blew off his left kneecap, melted the soles of his shoes to his feet, dreadful burns under both arms, back of his head had a 3" diameter burn.

His co-workers loaded him in a pickup immediately and headed to the nearest hospital. On the way while running a stop sign or light came the lucky accident.

The doctors said without that car crash he would not have lived; that the accident restarted his heart. I remember my mother, who never drove fast, leaving as fast a 1958 Ford truck would go. All it would ever do, she wrung out of it for about 40 miles to Waynesville NC.

I got to visit him at the hospital after maybe 3 months, bandages all over, not recognizable to me. He was there for about a year, then the out patient stuff for another year.

He healed, with heavy scarring except the one in back of his head, about a silver dollar sized patch where hair never grew back. The majority of the body burns were like a bad blistering sunburn, and didn't scar much.

Docs said he was lucky to live through that, most with over 50% burns didn't make it. In later years when I could understand, I was told he'd been lucky to reach the hospital with a heartbeat.

So that car crash was also a lucky accident; I was told it was bad. Turns out it was good.

After he got better, he went to work again. He's gone now for other reasons, but he was a tough bird.
And I thought about how lucky I was.
Thanks Dad

Dobber
 
Good to hear that everything turned out OK on that one.
I hate electrical accidents like that. A brother of a good friend of mine was killed out in Somerset, PA this past year, with his fire department helping someone that was in a car accident with fallen wires. He should have known better.
I had to yell and scream like a raging idiot about a month ago, a crane got tangled in some power lines here, so we got called out for it. Even though they have a huge sign pointing up to the power lines, he was driving with his boom all the way up and got them.
The guy insisted that if he jumps from the crane to the ground, without touching the crane and ground at the same time, he will be OK. He was a pretty large guy, and besides doubting that he would let go of the handle before he hit the ground, I was sure he would fall, possibly stretching his body across 2 power fields on the ground and getting zapped on the ground. (I have never seen that happen, but they say it is very possible with that kind of electricity)
I basically had to tell him that I would blow his head off to get him to stay in that crane, and drive away from the lines instead. He was safe in the crane, and did it. Nothing happened at all, crane was not even damaged either. They kept working for the day.
I hate power accidents, Be Careful!
Those 2 people that you guys mentioned are very lucky!
 
I worked at a large plant that had a heavy test floor for generators; they had a large service of 13.8kv incoming power.

Two of the old security guards had been there since the place was constructed. They told me one day they were sitting at their desk when the lights sagged hard for a few seconds. An hand-tripped alarm went off a few seconds later.

One of the contractors had failed to lock out a high voltage box before going into it; he had grabbed an unisulated buss bar and simply roasted himself.

Luckily that was the first and last accident of the sort in that plant and it's been 30+ years now.
 
Well I don't know if it qualifies as an accident persay however this weekend my Cincinatti toolmaster "broke." The head had always been noisy and I assumed that this was as I'd been told just due to the varispeed drive. Well all of a sudden I was running my mill when I heard a loud "snap"! The belt had flew off the pully. Well we turned the head upside down to put the belt back on and then found what had caused the problem. Somebody did a poor rebelting of the machine some years back, and the two pullies were terribly misaligned. So we simply reset the pullies and bought two setscrews to go where the guy who changed the belts neglected to put them, and now I'm back in buinsess. However now that machine is quieter then ever. I've never heard such a quiet milling machine in my life. I can hardly hear it over the dim whirl of the phase converter and my phase converter aint too loud either. So if my mill never had broke I'd never had had it running so beautifully!

Adam
 








 
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