Teen Dies Days After Touching Electrified Fence On School Football Field

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Happened here in Baltimore in 2006

Happened here in Baltimore in 2006

The city of Baltimore is set to approve a $200,000 settlement with the family of a 14-year-old Randallstown girl who was electrocuted in 2006 while stretching during a church softball game in Druid Hill Park, ending a years-long legal battle.
But for Anthony "Bubba" Green, a former Baltimore Colts lineman who is the girl's father, the end of the lawsuit is far from the end of the cause.
"We don't want this to happen to anybody else," Green said Tuesday as he choked back tears. "We feel this issue is going to help Baltimore to become a safer place."
Green and his wife, Nancy Arrington Green, have become the national face of the danger of "lethal contact voltage" after the death of their daughter, Deanna.
They have won passage of new rules and laws in Maryland and Rhode Island that call for increased scanning for stray and contact electricity, and are pursuing new regulation in Florida.
Green plans to speak about the issue in the coming weeks with the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
"The Greens have taken this beyond their grief over their daughter," said the couple's attorney, William H. "Billy" Murphy Jr. "They have made this a national cause."
The settlement ends a protracted court fight with the city of Baltimore over the girl's death. Her foot had been resting against a fence that was touching an underground cable when she reached for a second fence, completing a lethal electrical circuit. Nearly 280 volts ran through her body.
Anthony Green said he met with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in January and had a heart-to-heart talk about his daughter.
"This is something that [Rawlings-Blake] inherited," Green said. "This was a very sensitive case for everyone."
The city's Board of Estimates, which is controlled by Rawlings-Blake, is expected to approve the settlement Wednesday.
"There are lots of sympathetic reasons for settling the case," said City Solicitor George A. Nilson. "Certainly, the young lady did nothing to bring this about."

Anthony Green described his daughter as a "child of God" who was a soprano, pianist and skilled softball player. He said he hoped the family's activism would help keep Deanna's memory alive.

Green said that contact voltage is a common phenomenon in areas with underground electric distribution systems across the country.

"Even though she's not here, her legacy still lives," Green said. "This is what we wanted to accomplish ? that she'll continue to be a blessing in other people's lives."

Deanna's death in May 2006 prompted the city to remove and repair underground electric lines in several city parks. In 2010, the family reached an undisclosed settlement with Douglas Electric and Lighting, the private contractor responsible for the lines in the park.

In 2011, the Maryland Public Service Commission adopted new regulations intended to prevent accidental electrocutions such as the one that killed Deanna.
 
PetrosA said:
What's scary is it said the "high school electricians" were doing the investigation. I would think (assuming they don't mean electricians who are still going to high school...) that at least a third party would be called in to conduct whatever investigating needs to be done.
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Yeah, let's not have the people who may have done the wiring do the investigating.


Seems like at some point lawyers for the boys family will have a field day shredding this investigations credibility.
 
Appears to be a open or missing equipment grounding conductor issue and ultimately failing to clear a ground fault, but you kind of have to sort through the writer's interpretations of technicalities they don't fully understand to figure out more details then that.

It says missing ground line, but then explains how they were using cameras to inspect the inside of pole - metal pole can have EGC attached to a lug in the base and the pole is bonded - without other details inspection inside the pole seems pointless other then maybe finding the point where the ground fault is occuring if you already determined by other means that the fault is within the pole itself. If EGC was missing then that is an installer's fault, if it is compromised, it may or may not be installers fault. I doubt the ground wire in question was ever supposed to connect to a circuit breaker, but the writer didn't know any better and it came out as if it should have.
 
It should have connected to the [ground bus at] the breaker panel.
Without a metallic fault clearing path a high ground current with resulting potential gradient seems likely.
And falling against the fence would be a good explanation for why the contact was held long enough to be fatal.
The ground fault it self inside the pole could have been equipment failure or wire damage when pulling, among other things.
 
GoldDigger said:
It should have connected to the [ground bus at] the breaker panel.
Without a metallic fault clearing path a high ground current with resulting potential gradient seems likely.
And falling against the fence would be a good explanation for why the contact was held long enough to be fatal.
The ground fault it self inside the pole could have been equipment failure or wire damage when pulling, among other things.
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We don't know if there was a fault inside the pole, the fact they were sending cameras inside to inspect things maybe suggests there could have been a fault inside pole, but a fault in one of the luminaires on top of the pole could have still had same results of energizing the pole. It would be nice with investigations like this if media could just include word for word anything released in official investigator's reports - hopefully they use proper terminology and descriptions of what is there. That goes for more then just incidents involving electricity also. Instead readers that do know something about the topic of discussion need to read between the lines to decipher things, and even then can get wrong information.
 
I hope this wasn't a case of someone installing a ground rod and connecting to that instead of an EGC and thinking it was okay. It didn't say how old the pole was, but didn't that used to be a common practice back in the day?
 
I think it is impossible to draw any real conclusions based on the poor reporting by someone who does not know electrical work.
 
GoldDigger said:
FWIW the article mentioned a "ground" wire running between the poles. That sounds like more than just a local ground rod.
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Yeah, I saw that too -- but wondered if they just took the EGC from one pole to the next and then just tied it to a ground rod instead of daisy chaining it back to the panel via the homerun?

Who knows. Still not enough info, I guess.
 
mayanees said:
They have won passage of new rules and laws in Maryland and Rhode Island that call for increased scanning for stray and contact electricity, and are pursuing new regulation in Florida.
...
Deanna's death in May 2006 prompted the city to remove and repair underground electric lines in several city parks. In 2010, the family reached an undisclosed settlement with Douglas Electric and Lighting, the private contractor responsible for the lines in the park.
...
In 2011, the Maryland Public Service Commission adopted new regulations intended to prevent accidental electrocutions such as the one that killed Deanna.
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How about they just enforce the existing rules? What new regulations would do any good if the existing ones are not being followed?

And just how does one "scan" for such a thing?
 
petersonra said:
How about they just enforce the existing rules? What new regulations would do any good if the existing ones are not being followed?

And just how does one "scan" for such a thing?
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In my area at least this was aimed directly at utility installations that are not covered by the NEC.

People and pets being shocked by live manhole covers and other metal utility installations.

As far as scanning it was done by inspecting.

Under orders from state regulators, NStar launched a crash inspection of 24,000 manhole covers, 18,000 of them in Boston. It reported in April that ''99.99-plus percent" had no stray voltage that could harm dogs or people. NStar stressed that every shocked dog case involved either electrical gear it did not own, such as city-controlled streetlights, or NStar cables that had been damaged by contractors.
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http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/03/03/nstar_faces_renewed_questions_of_safety/
 
So how does that work? The fence is electrified and the current flows through their feet into the soil through rubber souls? Or would they have to be on their knees or otherwise touching the ground? How about a wet blade of grass grazing against an ankle exposed by very low-cut socks? All that seems a stretch. Would there have to be something else grounded near the fence? Maybe another fence not directly connected to the electrical fence?

I'm not asking about this particular scenario, I understand the facts are limited. I'm asking about the possibilities given a circumstance of a fence that reads voltage to ground.
 
If you have a long run of fence (many posts set into the ground) you will get a complicated touch potential relative to the earth right at the bottom if the fence. The voltage will be highest halfway between the nearest posts. At each post there will be a voltage gradient in the earth extending more or less radially out from the post.
Even if you have well insulated shoes, there will be capacitive current some people will sense.
Add in wet grass, wet shoes, or body part contact some distance away from the fence and you have the potential [sic] for injury.
For a long run of fence, the trip current if the branch breaker would have to be pretty high, or the soil very resistive.
Whether the fence could reach a dangerous voltage just from soil gradients, without a metallic connection to a faulted light pole is another question. In some cases the fence might even be attached to the light pole.
 
Not insulating

Not insulating

jaylectricity said:
So how does that work? The fence is electrified and the current flows through their feet into the soil through rubber souls?
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That's all it takes. "Rubber" soled shoes do not insulate from electric shock. You could be standing on carpet, linoleum, dirt or whatever and be barefoot, wearing boots, shoes, even electrical safety boots, and still get zapped. Proper precautions must be taken and equipment must be rated for the situation.

We have all watched the safety videos and it happens every day.
 
GoldDigger said:
If you have a long run of fence (many posts set into the ground) you will get a complicated touch potential relative to the earth right at the bottom if the fence. The voltage will be highest halfway between the nearest posts. At each post there will be a voltage gradient in the earth extending more or less radially out from the post.
Even if you have well insulated shoes, there will be capacitive current some people will sense.
Add in wet grass, wet shoes, or body part contact some distance away from the fence and you have the potential [sic] for injury.
For a long run of fence, the trip current if the branch breaker would have to be pretty high, or the soil very resistive.
Whether the fence could reach a dangerous voltage just from soil gradients, without a metallic connection to a faulted light pole is another question. In some cases the fence might even be attached to the light pole.
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I was wondering myself why the fence wouldn't be grounded at every pole since each pole is at least somewhat related to a concrete encased ground.
 
ggunn said:
I was wondering myself why the fence wouldn't be grounded at every pole since each pole is at least somewhat related to a concrete encased ground.
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The old refrain. :)
Repeat after me class:
"Connected to earth does not mean that there cannot be a voltage present relative to distant earth. Or even nearby surface earth."
 
My 2 cents

got sent out on service call to repair ground lights in apartments complex. while repairing lights we notice we didn't have power to certain area and start troubleshooting and started to dig in area where conduit came in and out of certain areas. While we were digging for problem we notice a lady walking her and the dog jumping/hopping like it was getting shocked. The lady never even noticed. we started to dig a little closer to side walk when we noticed the conduit was broken/rusted before it went under sidewalk and wires were bare just looking at them. We took a meter and got voltage bleeding off about 10' away from broken conduit and it never even tripped breaker.... the conduit that was buried was EMT and they used SS connectors.... MY 2 cents........I like this Forum. every once in a while a run into a problem discussed on this forum. :D
 
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