[aprssig] 3' snow emergency dumb idea...(response)

[Paul Zawada]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 2:43 PM, DALE BLANCHARD <wa7ixk at embarqmail.com>wrote:

>
> It is not very often a lineman works on a dead circuit.
> Here they treat all circuits as live. If not they are shorted.
> I also have a suicide cord for my house. I have one master breaker that
> disconnect the house.
> It is then my responsibility.
>

Line mechanics are human; they make mistakes too.  Often those mistakes get
them killed.  If you forgot to open your service disconnect, would you want
that to be a contributing factor to the line mechanic's death?   That's a
pretty high price to expect him to pay for a mistake.

And while the line mechanic's safety is of great concern, it's also about
the safety of your neighbors, perhaps more so.  It is possible for a primary
conductor to be on the ground in a high impedance fashion so that an
innocent bystander (most likely someone NOT trained on the danger) can
stumble upon it and get killed because the guy with the generator forgot to
open his main disconnect.  I work for a power company; believe me, there are
too many things that can go wrong that you don't anticipate, especially if
you don't follow the rules that were put in place for good reason.

I am amazed at the number of folks that can have the "foresight" to own a
suicide cord but refuse to set up their electrical service the proper way
because they think they know what they are doing.   And even if they do know
what they are doing, what sort of example does that set for their idiot
neighbor who doesn't?

--zawada
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