Your Hive Lineman is at it again with a bit of a sad and disgusting edition of A Day With A Lineman. We were back out in the hell hole we call The North Country and we’re really surprised and grossed out by what we eventually found.
Way back when this section of powerline was installed they must have just drawn a straight line from point A to point B. Then said go build it. You know don’t bother to go out and look at the terrain or anything… Steep drop offs, little canyons, and rolling hills. Country gravel roads wind all over the place but the powerlines don’t follow them.
From the open circuit breaker(recloser) we started patrolling the line. Looking closely at every pole looking for the cause of the power outage. Some of the wild ryegrass we had to drive through was 5 feet tall. In our Side-by-Side we couldn’t even see where we were going. The powerline crosses the roads but they don’t run along side them. Approximately 6.3 miles of line we had to drive out through the middle of nowhere!!
Each green dot is a pole. We had to look at every single one of them
Finally we found the problem. A pole top had burnt off due to the electricity tracking down the pole. The electricity will start tracking towards the neutral when the insulator fails. Eventually the pole will catch on fire and burn off.
Yep, the top is laying over there in the weeds
Crazy thing is the energized wire isn’t touching the ground. The top is resting on the weeds and didn’t catch them on fire due to that fact they are green and it’s only 7,200 volts.
So if the wire never touched the ground or is laying on the ground, what caused the recloser to open??? Well the smell of death was a good indicator. Plus the spot on the energized wire that had fur stuck to it.
I will keep the disgusting photos until the end. Don’t worry there will be a fair warning before you see them.
Trying to ignore the stank, I gave a call in for another Lineman to grab the Line-Truck and bring us a pole and material. While we waited we created a visual open in the line and installed protective grounds. Then untied the wire from the insulators on the broken pole top. The. The Line-Truck showed up with a new pole and we used it to yanked the old one out of the ground.
I headed down the hill to grab a couple things, while the other guys got the hole dug with the auger.
Slammed the new pole in the hole and compacted the dirt around it with a hydraulic tamp
Move that big ass Line-Truck out of the way and bring a little bucket truck in to fly the wire up to the pole and tie it onto the insulators
We made quick work of this because that rank smell was horrible!! We needed to get outta there!!
Everything is repaired and our protective ground is removed. Time to energize the line and get the heck outta this stanky place. I am really glad this didn’t happen during the summer because we could have had a huge fire to do deal with. It did burn a little spot but the rain we have been having kept it from spreading. Thank God
Alright, you are probably wondering what kind of animal got into the wire. Ive seen birds, squirrels, raccoons, snakes, and even a couple cows get electrocuted. Never have I see 2 Deer get blown up.
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Just down the hill on the edge of the burnt weeds were 2 dead deer. One looked like it had been there a little longer that the other. Hence the awful stench and flies everywhere.
It looked like a coyote or something had already gotten to one of them and the other looked kind of fresh
The electricity blew a hole in the side of this one and it’s guts boiled out
Electricity will cook flesh from the inside out. It’s very disturbing to see injuries from people getting into contact with energized lines. They show us that kind of stuff on day one. Don’t fear it, but respect it.
Alright well that wraps up another edition of A Day With A Lineman. I will leave you with a couple photos that hopefully will block the others out of your mind.
This is a perfect example why you never approach or touch any powerlines or cables that are down. It could be the last thing you do.
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