On the subject of snagging a power line, I have a story: I retired from the Dept. of Defense as a mobile crane operator. I drove a Fantuzzi top loader for the last 10 years of my career (Google Fantuzzi). One day, I was tasked with driving to the other side of the military base I was working on, and I passed under some BIG lines, using a spotter to observe. These were 50,000 V lines. Using a standard 10 ft. clearance distance, I was cleared to go under them, with room to spare. Later, after completing the job, I returned under the same lines. Having cleared them a few hours earlier, my spotter truck moved ahead of me to do some traffic control. I now wish he had stayed!
Problem was on the return trip, the wind was blowing pretty hard. I didn't pay attention, but now those lines were bouncing up and down in the wind. I was looking at my obstacles left and right, having cleared the lines earlier with absolutely no problem. Suddenly, lightning struck! Not real lightning, but the man-made kind. A sudden brilliant, blinding flash of light, and what sounded like a hand-grenade going off to the side of my head! Boy was it loud!
I knew instantly that my boom had snagged one of those bad boys above me. I slammed on the brake, stopped, and saw a cable that had dropped outside the cab, draped across my machine.
I didn't know if it was hot or not, but I knew enough to stay put in the cab. I radioed the spotter truck who returned and told me "Don't get out!" Yeah....No kidding. sitting 10 ft. in the air, looking at something lying on my machine that could most certainly ruin my day.
Well, the base fire dept. got called, and 5 minutes later, they were all parked about 100 yds. from me and would come no closer. Can't say I blamed them. They said they were calling a base electrician to kill everything. Good idea! Guess what? It was Sunday. No base electrician on duty. They had to call him in from wherever he was that Sunday.
Guess who had to sit in the cab for about 3 hours and wait!?!? With a full bladder no less. I didn't even have a container to pee in, and I sure didn't dare open the door to go overboard.
Once the electrician arrived and looked things over, he simply walked up to me and said "You can just go ahead drive out from under that wire...It's not hot any more. It was dead as soon as you broke it." Turns out the sub-station blew all sorts of circuit breakers. I killed power to a big chunk of the base that day.
Oh brother....I did NOT get paid enough that day, even with the overtime!
I was doing paperwork and incident reports for a week.
