On June 30th 2004, I went to work.( This is not unusual on a Wednesday.) I usually sit down at a desk out in the shop and do the paperwork from the previous day, and did so just the same as always, this particular day. Now, I typically get done with my paperwork before 8:00. This day was no different in this regard. Finished up, about 7:45am............No problem, right? Wrong. Well, in the sense that there would be no problem anyway.
Since it has been raining in almost record amounts for the whole month, it was really humid and stuffy in the shop, so I Figured it was time to utilize the exhaust fan in the shop wall, to pull some A/C air into the shop through ( yeah, *through ) the garage door next to the desk, so I got up and went to turn it on...............So far so good.
Got to the area where all the fan switches were and found that they were already switched on, and thought "must be a breaker blown" you know,...... thinking that maybe some lightning had maybe caused a surge and kicked some breakers. So, right next to the swithes for the fans sits the breaker box, 440 3 phase, 6' tall breaker box. there are three, so I figured start with the closest one, and check 'em out.............processing the thought anyway.
Upon opening the first box it was obvious which breaker was kicked, so I flicked it toward the "on" position to check it out, sure enough, it was opened by a fault. That seemes normal to me, as I have reset so many circuit breakers in my life, I can;t recall a small part of them nowadays.........................I pushed the breaker back to reset it, and felt it click,...............once again very normal to me, and as habits be habits, went ahead and pushed the switch to the on posistion ...........BAM!
The security camera got more of it but this shot was let out of the bag long enough to make it all over the internet, so Sheryl emailed it to me at one of my dealerships today. ( Sheryl is my wife, she works at the same place I do and stays in the office all day, while I drive around and visit dealers for my work)
As you can see, there was a pretty big bunch of flame showing at the capture on the picture, there was another guy sitting in the van with all the oors open in the picture too,..................The explosion rocked the video camera that filmed it too. It's mounted about 30 feet up and across the shop about 40 feet, so I'd give it a 50 foot distance using the Pathagoran theory.
Anyone ever seen what happens when 440 goes to ground in front of you?
The flames went at me so fast I just turned and walked away. While making my exit checking by touch to see what damage may have happened to my face and legs and ears and such,................I dropped my damn Pop-Tart.................LOL. I lost all the hair on my right arm and burned a couple of fingertips. No major damage at all. After seeing the moving pictures though, I feel very flame resistant and don;t think the flame wars on Newsgroups can do me much harm. I fell Blessed to be alive, as the power found its way to ground through the wall behind it ( concrete soaked with water from all the rain of late)
The damage to the system (electrical ) was massive, and took all day to repair, and half of the night last night. I have never ever ever seen anything like this happen before, and thought maybe by sharing this, as an example, ...........Maybe someone out there might just leave something alone before they kill themself. If the power had grounded through me, which it very likely could have, since I was just recently indoors form the rain, I could have been a pile of ashes..............Fortunate...............I lived to telll about it.
If the company will make it available I'll share it on a website also, but they are being kinda odd about it. Like I am a criminal or something...................Oh well, in todays worls, I'm not sure I'd sare it either. Especially with the *victim*
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