Hal
I served 45 year as a Firefighter EMT. Every riding position on the apparatus had assigned initial duties to perform. Barring situations were the unit's Officer In Charge (OIC) has to redirect the firefighters on the unit to a more urgent task, one of the default assigned roles is Utility Control. That includes shutting off any outside liquid or gaseous fuel source and opening the main breaker of the service equipment. The Utility Control Firefighter also searches the floor were the Service Equipment is located as soon as the Power was shut off. When that firefighter dismounted they already had a hydraulic lock breaker (Hydra Ram), Irons; this is a flat head axe and a "Halligan bar" prying tool; and the short bolt cutters in order to be able to force entry into the portion of the structure were the utility controls were located. I filled that role many times because the officers trusted me to know what the main disconnect is since I was a working electrician.
Therein lay the source of my antipathy to what the Fire Investigators wanted us to do. The always harped on only opening the Main Breaker so as not to disturb a tripped breaker which might help determine the "Cause and Origin" of the initial ignition. I kept pushing right back at them saying that what made up the Service Disconnecting Means is often less obvious than they assumed. I wanted the Utility Control Firefighter to open every single disconnect and circuit breaker that they could find. A smoke filled basement with low visibility is no place to try to figure out which breakers were the "Main."
The housing stock in our service demand area; which firefighters call their "First Due Area;" was mostly older than 50 years. We have a lot of fused pullouts as the Service Disconnecting Means and far more split bus panels than a newer built area would have. We even have a fair number of Sears, Roebuck and Company kit homes with the numbering on the structural lumber still visible in the basements and attics. Most of those are still wired with knob and tube. Some of the panels in our first due area were assembled from parts into a cabinet that had been made by the carpenters. The electricians would then line them with asbestos sheeting and build the panel board inside that cabinet. We also have some converted DC trolley power 600 volt panels which have fuses in all of the neutrals. Keep in mind that there is no legally enforceable mechanism to force any of the owners to upgrade these relics from the dawn of electrical use in dwellings.
On the one hand I like the idea of an external disconnect of some kind for the safety of Firefighters. But it will take many decades for the existing houses to be replaced or modified sufficiently to force the electrical to be brought up to present code. On the other hand our area has had a steady growth in Home Invasion robberies and I can understand the concerns occupants have about having an electrical disconnect outside of the home.
The region's telephone service provider convinced the Public Service Commission to remove the requirement for the telephone Customer Service Unit to have battery backup with the batteries maintained by the service provider. They do not even have to provide the initial back up battery now. Since the provider is now changing all service to fiber optic lines, loss of utility power cuts off telephone service to all affected premises. So you want to invade a home and hold the spouse and or children hostage so that the other spouse will withdraw the family's life savings and give it to the robbers step one is to cut off the power to disable the fiber optic telephone service and make the occupants come outside to restore power.
I sure hope that a power outage is not caused by, say, an ice storm which destroys the antennas on most cell towers and pulls down all of the aerial fiber which connects them to the Public Switched Telephone Network. Ice Storms are the most frequently occurring weather disasters in this region.
[/RANT] = Rant mode off.
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Tom Horne
