electrical fire in the news

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scwirenut

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By DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press 12/19/2006
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Hours before a deadly fire at a group home, a maintenance man intentionally short-circuited some wiring to cut off power while he worked on the furnace, investigators said in a report issued Tuesday.
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The report by the state fire marshal's office did not pinpoint the cause of the Nov. 27 fire that killed 10 people at the home for the mentally ill and disabled. But it listed an electrical short or overload in "makeshift" wiring in the attic as a possible cause.

In the report, released to The Associated Press under an open-records law request, investigators said they found no evidence of arson, and they called the investigation non-criminal.

The maintenance man, David Forrester, told an investigator he used pliers to stick a wire into an outlet in order to trip the circuit breaker and cut off the power while he worked on the furnace Nov. 26. The wiring ran through the attic.

A short-circuit can cause wires to overheat and start a fire.

Deputy State Fire Marshal Bill Zieres said the attic contained blown cellulose insulation ? essentially finely shredded paper ? that probably smoldered for several hours before anyone noticed.

A worker wanting to temporarily cut off power to part of a home would ordinarily flip a circuit breaker manually, then reset it later. But Forrester said he did not know which circuit breaker in the electrical box led to the furnace.

Asked by the investigator why he didn't simply unplug the furnace, he said: "I don't know, didn't even think about it."

Reached by telephone, Misty Forrester told the AP that her husband had no comment. An employee at River of Life Ministries, the home's operators, also said no one had any comment.

Last week, the state of Missouri sued the operator, claiming the home had been secretly, illegally run by Robert DuPont, who was previously convicted in a Medicare and Medicaid fraud scheme. State regulators also stripped the licenses of all four River of Life homes and ordered them closed by Jan. 5.
 

kingpb

Senior Member
Location
SE USA as far as you can go
Occupation
Engineer, Registered
I worked with a guy on a job once, who tripped breakers by sawing through the conduit instead of identifying the circuits and shutting off the breakers. When I returned to the shop, I told the Owner what this guy was doing, that Friday ended up being my last day.

Turned out for the better, it made me go get my engineering degree.

It's too bad how other peoples stupidity seems to always affect everyone but themselves.
 

tallgirl

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Great White North
Occupation
Controls Systems firmware engineer
georgestolz said:
It's tragic that ten people died.

Without more information I would be skeptical about the cause, IMO.

I dunno -- the article doesn't say if the breaker ever actually tripped. If the wiring between where he shorted out the receptacle and the breaker were bad enough, there might not have been enough current available to trip the breaker. In which case, the wiring could have overheated and started a small fire. The electrician could even have put a meter on the terminals of the receptacle, with the wire still shorting things out, and would have seen 0 volts across the point where he created the short, assumed all was peachy, done his thing, and moved on.

Another possibility is that the short resulted in an arc occuring at some point in the attic wiring prior to the breaker opening, and that arc started the attic insulation smouldering, which in turn resulted in the fire.

There are a number of ways his little stunt could have resulted in the fire. If I were him I'd never have admitted to doing what he did. Not that I'd have lied or anything, but I wouldn't have volunteered the information ...
 

tallgirl

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Controls Systems firmware engineer
mdshunk said:
Not every speculation needs to have meaning. Speculation is a valuable step in the troubleshooting process.

Yup. Also a valuable step in the learning process. In my previous life I used to engage in a lot of "security flaw hypothesis testing". We'd guess at ways things could be hacked, then see how good our guesses were.
 

charlie b

Moderator
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Location
Lockport, IL
Occupation
Retired Electrical Engineer
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
("After this, therefore because of this.")


No, I am not a student of Latin. I learned this phrase from an early West Wing episode. If they start with the notion that the short circuit was intentionally caused prior to the fire taking place, and logically move to the notion that the short caused the fire, then they are violating the rules of logic. It might have actually happened, but you can't prove it with that type of logical argument. More facts are needed, and I saw no relevant facts in the news article.
 
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