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SEO

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What would you do if you found electrical equipment that was imminently dangerous to human life or property?
 
SEO said:
What would you do if you found electrical equipment that was imminently dangerous to human life or property?
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When I have (and it has happened) I will notify the person I feel can do something about it. Once it was a private call to the fire chief of the town on the business line. Another time it was a 911 call to fire department dispatch. Other times I have quietly let the electrical inspector to look at a particular area.

If it is something like exposed energized parts, or something that seemed it was about to catch fire I would make an attempt to shut it down assuming it I was fairly confident that shutting it down would not cause more harm then good.

But the above has little to do with the ongoing discussion about EIs placing ECs reasonable for other violations. :)
 
iwire said:
When I have (and it has happened) I will notify the person I feel can do something about it. Once it was a private call to the fire chief of the town on the business line. Another time it was a 911 call to fire department dispatch. Other times I have quietly let the electrical inspector to look at a particular area.

If it is something like exposed energized parts, or something that seemed it was about to catch fire I would make an attempt to shut it down assuming it I was fairly confident that shutting it down would not cause more harm then good.

But the above has little to do with the ongoing discussion about EIs placing ECs reasonable for other violations. :)
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I've gotten the POCO involved too when the risk of doing nothing would endanger lives.
 
iwire said:
When I have (and it has happened) I will notify the person I feel can do something about it. Once it was a private call to the fire chief of the town on the business line. Another time it was a 911 call to fire department dispatch. Other times I have quietly let the electrical inspector to look at a particular area.

If it is something like exposed energized parts, or something that seemed it was about to catch fire I would make an attempt to shut it down assuming it I was fairly confident that shutting it down would not cause more harm then good.

But the above has little to do with the ongoing discussion about EIs placing ECs reasonable for other violations. :)
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I agree iwire after I posted it I wanted to rephrase it a little. Everybody comes across this type of situation and would like some guidence. Many times it's just a service call and action has to be taken. I didn't want this to be an inspector issue at all.
 
I am for safety, heck I even support the NECs new requirement of TR receptacles and the increased use of GFCIs.

I just don't want to be forced to repair electrical installations that have nothing to do with me and put be in a position where I have to justify added costs to the company's customer or just have the company I work for eat the added costs. :)
 
I've only had this happen a couple of times, where I felt it was going to really hurt someone.

In that case I just notified the owner. One was an open pedestal I found in a subdivision behind a house we were doing a pool install on.

The other was a service drop that had come unattached from the house. The POCO splices were coming undone and the cable was degraded to the point where bare aluminum was showing in many places. The drop was hangning about 48" above the floor of a patio. The owner cut waterhose and slipped it over the cable, and then cut a notch in a 2x4 and propped it under the cable to raise it up about 60" off the patio. Homeowner said they knew it was dangerous but was afraid to have the poco out in fear they would find the customers "slow meter."

What else can you do really?
 
I was part of a job that we were connecting a generator to a 22 story apartment building for the power company during a prolonged outage in CT.

Both 4000 amp switches in the electric room failed to open. The lever moved but the switches didn't. They haven't been operated in 20 years and the grease hardened up.

We had to unbolt all of the fuses to make a visible break between the building and the utility before we could start the generator.

We let the fire department and the electrical inspector know about this. They contacted the building owner. I don't know if it was ever repaired, but we did our duty and made notification to the people in charge.
 
SEO said:
What would you do if you found electrical equipment that was imminently dangerous to human life or property?
Click to expand...

I would hope that the inspector would see it too so he can force me to fix it. ;)
 
Notifying the wrong party

Notifying the wrong party

brantmacga said:
In that case I just notified the owner.
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Why? The serving electric utility depends on people like you and the customers to notify them where there are dangerous situations. An open service pedestal certainly is (not can be but is) dangerous. I can't believe you didn't report the service drop either. The service drop could cause an electrocution just like the service pedestal. Additionally, the service drop could cause a fire. I am glad there is now 5 feet of clearance off the patio, never mind that the NEC and the NESC both require a little more than that!

You ask, "What else can you do really?" You can notify the owner of the facilities, in other words, the serving electric utility. :mad:
 
Last time i tried to tell the poco about a hazard ,they gave me the old you dont know what your talking about answer.

It was a live drop to an old pole for a mobile home that was nolonger there.On pole customer side was pole with about 10 feet of drop hanging down and no meter,just open can.On poco side because of heavy trees and vegitation was there wire laying right next to a metal wire fence,very much live.There customer service division wanted not to come out cause they thaught it just a tv cable.
 
Once my wife and I drove up on a car wreck, where the car T-boned and broke a pole and the 1ph triplex that went across a four lane hiway with a full median was hanging down around 6-8 ft from the ground..this had traffic backed up for a several blocks including semi's....I asked the hipo if they had called PSO, he said yes but the service man was 40 miles away....The cut-out was hanging down, SOO....I was in my swimming trunks and sandels, as we were coming back from the lake...........THEN here comes a friend from POCO in a smaller bucket truck, but actually the wrong POCO company.... I flagged him down to where I was, told him what we had, which was obvious......He said that's not our line...I said, "Ah...lets do it...I'll call them and tell them" he threw me some gloves, he went up in the bucket and cut it and rolled it up and cleared the hiway. So it wasnt really all that dangersous since it was blown....but it sure got the traffic going....:smile: This day and age someone would sue you over that...
 
charlie said:
Why? The serving electric utility depends on people like you and the customers to notify them where there are dangerous situations. An open service pedestal certainly is (not can be but is) dangerous. I can't believe you didn't report the service drop either. The service drop could cause an electrocution just like the service pedestal. Additionally, the service drop could cause a fire. I am glad there is now 5 feet of clearance off the patio, never mind that the NEC and the NESC both require a little more than that!

You ask, "What else can you do really?" You can notify the owner of the facilities, in other words, the serving electric utility. :mad:
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ever think notifying the owner means calling the POCO? after all, they are the owner! ;) i'm not completely dumb. :D

as for the service drop, it belonged to the customer as it came past meter.
 
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SEO said:
What would you do if you found electrical equipment that was imminently dangerous to human life or property?
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I have been known to scream like a little girl!

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:grin:
 
iwire said:
If it is something like exposed energized parts, or something that seemed it was about to catch fire I would make an attempt to shut it down assuming it I was fairly confident that shutting it down would not cause more harm then good.
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Bob,
You reminded me of a situation I had several years ago. One of my customers called me about a 500 Hp DC motor making a grinding sound.
When I arrived I found the motor running but I was concerned the armature was going to drop and ruin the motor. I hit the E-Stop.
Turns out they were coiling 1000' rolls of plastic gas pipe and they only had ten feet left. :mad:
 
SEO said:
What would you do if you found electrical equipment that was imminently dangerous to human life or property?
Click to expand...
On the way home yesterday I saw a telephone pole that had been on fire for a while. It wasn't blazing but it had small fire going.
I called the cops to pass it on to whomever
 
John Valdes said:
Bob,
You reminded me of a situation I had several years ago. One of my customers called me about a 500 Hp DC motor making a grinding sound.
When I arrived I found the motor running but I was concerned the armature was going to drop and ruin the motor. I hit the E-Stop.
Turns out they were coiling 1000' rolls of plastic gas pipe and they only had ten feet left. :mad:
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I'm lost with your post.
 
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