You Rock Greg! We dont know if he is breaking M.A.D. minimum approach distance. He may be inside it. We dont know elevation or the KV level of this line. But shit just happens as you well know Greg. As a line clearance climber we had to know the KV and Minimum approach long before spikes to tree, I promise this guy knows what hes doing and you Greg i can clearly see knows what you're talking about. What a relief you commented. LOL. The comments on here are for the most part silly. You're the only one Ive read with brains on the subject. SO THANK YOU!
I'm a retired career fire captain and I made it a point to thank these guys every time we ran a call with them. Wires down, underground power box fires etc, etc...these guys work under usually the worst conditions during storms and they come through every time. Huge cajones. You guys are the best!
Here in Europe we have buried underground cables. Higher upfront cost, but no faults in decades. I have not seen one lineman in my life working on repairs.
I agree with you Capt. There’s not many things that I hate dealing with as a firefighter but electricity is definitely one of them. It’s so nice being able to call these guys to give us a hand.
Most uneducated people i meet assume my job is dangerous and "you cant pay me enough to do that, you must do anything for money huh?" Im just like calm down. Not that serious. I do residential. You are thinking of the lineman. 120-277v hurts and can cause you to clinch. But lineman get their heads blown off and their shoes melted. Way different.
@@matt59fire Yeah !!! But most people take everything for granted when they turn on their kitchen light. They're self entitled and think they have it coming. But just working Even One Day in the field with a Utility Worker of Any Type would REALLY Blow Their Minds. I'm just Grateful that there are those who are Happy to do The Grunt Work that Keeps our Modern Society going !!!
Imma drink to that. Can't imagine the feeling of loss, or how I would feel in the woods if the scent reminded me of mine. Here's to him, And here's to you.
@@spurgear4 My Dad too. I also made a 37 year career in the trade. Your comment brought the memory of the smell right back to me. I always smell the bits of oil, grease, wet and treated leather thrown in for good measure. Dad would let me rebuild the fuses for him before installing them in the middle of the night on an outage call.
@@philfoster4298 I still have his climbing gear in my old airforce kit bag. I had it open a couple weeks ago and the memories were right there again. I really need to take the time and clean and treat the leather.
Maybe where you live. But not in my State. Worst is 25F ish. But tbh, all construction and outside trade jobs brave the weather. Literally the only ones who don't are retail and white collard positions.
My father did this kind of job for decades. Made me get an engineering degree. He did much of it with climbing spikes and belt. up close and personal. Worked closely with PCB's back when they were the liquid in transformers. Also worked with the transmission lines with voltages over 200,000 volts. Made it home from every job. One of his co-workers was killed while he was on vacation. He took that very personally. His grandson now has some of his old hand tools from that job.
Jim Mccrank...I just want to know how you can avoid blowing fuses while the power is still on. I would imagine it would arc every time you tried the second part of the hookup! In any other circumstance (electrical appliances for instance) you would cut the power off first. Why can’t that be done in this case?
My Dad was a lineman beginning in 1947 in Cambridge, Mass. for the old Cambridge Electric Light Co. He was good at it and the city Fire Dept. always told me what a hard worker he was.
I was throwing in a fuse like this one day at a trailer park, while the neighbours were arguing with each other. They had just started walking away yelling at each other when my fuse blew back. Everyone thought the other side was shooting at them. Funniest thing I’d seen in years.
@@cannedlaughter2535 No because I ran over and told everyone to come down. They were yelling, “Gun! Gun! They’re shooting!” It was close, but after that everyone had a good laugh.
It's way louder than that in person too. If you're inside the house and it happens outside it sounds like a shot gun going off. I bet that lineman's ears were ringing for a while lol. The hydro execs make way too much money, but these guys actually earn their pay fully.
Eh, I don’t believe you. Maybe some of them sound loud but not this one. We all know what a shotgun blast sounds like on video. It’s still loud and you can hear the echo in background. This was just a buzz
I watched a lineman do that with a fuse after the power went out on our short street. But the fault was a pinhole in our underground power cable under the sidewalk at the first house on our street. They brought in a portable generator for the 22 houses on our street. Then their backhoe dug a hole big enough to hide my CR-V. They spliced the cable, filled the hole and we had power again by about 1:30 AM. Thank you, power company linemen.
My father was a lineman for MN Power for many years. I heard about those for years but never actually had the chance to see one in action. That was just one of the many things that I heard about. It is a very unforgiving line of work. I am so glad he always followed the rules. He always came home each night with all the same parts he left with in the morning.
@@gregdolecki8530 I have seen the fuses and heard all about them but was never in the area when one blew. The company was pretty particular about who was in the work zone
@@gregdolecki8530 I don't know if you were being funny about not seeing a lineman in action. Maybe you missed the part about my father being on and he came home Ali ve every night
You don't see them much for shure. I'm 25 and I can only think of like 8 times for shure I remember seeing them. Mostly in winter or in city areas away from where I live
@@medmusic7977 You look like you live in your moms basement playing guitar. Keep your insensitive comments to yourself. You don’t have the balls to do what they do!
@@jazziejaayy actually my mother live with me, And u look like a prozac drama queen that struggles with simple tasks with that owl 🦉 looking face of yours 😂 Now go write on a wall
Retired after 37 years , can’t count how many times that happened, as a troubleman it was about every week. he was using an 8 ft stick , I always had a 10 ft on the boom in a spring loaded holder and I always wore ear muffs and the rest of my PPE. Before we started getting better Underground fault locators and equipment to locate it . It was not unusual to blow 2 or 3 trying to locate a bad section of cable. You would get some that sounded like a cannon and some that fizzle when they blew. You never really get comfortable with it Lol 😁as someone mentioned you duck every time.
We lost a phase coming into my manufacturing plant one day. A lineman came out and saw the clamp had come off the feeder. He replaced the clamp. As soon as he touched the clamp to the line, he was engulfed by a fireball. What we didn't know was that a lightning arrestor had shorted to ground, which is what burned the original clamp in two. Everything immediately went dark. I waited a moment for a sound that he was okay. Nothing. Finally, I asked, "Hey man. Are you alright? " I heard the frustration in his voice as he replied, "Yeah.....but I'm going to have a hell of a sunburn in the morning."
Arc flash is no joke, blew a 100amp fuse right in front of my face, shorting to ground when my screwdriver slipped Its like getting flashbanged in some videogame, everything just turned white for a minute
Nothing but respect for these guys. I've worked with 480 volts in my career and have seen dead shorts and it can scare the daylights out of you. The linemen work with thousands of volts and it is very dangerous. They go out at night during lightning storms to restore power too. Good guys.
We have a local ex lineman here in my town named Ronnie Hindsman that lost his arms and his partner died on him during a repair. Its a dangerous job for men with talent and guts, electricity is no laughing matter.
Not only that, but they have to do that already dangerous work in bad conditions in hurricanes etc. This is also when ambulances and firefighters are busy and can't help as easily if something does go wrong.
My granddad finally started telling stories from his time as a lineman back in the 50s, 60s and 70s. There's a reason he rarely talked about his work when he came home to his family. If they knew how spooky it was to work on remote lines on stormy nights they would have missed a lot of sleep. On one occasion he got electrocuted from a 20kV line which turned out to not be quite as deenergized as he had thought. The shock itself was evidently nowhere near full power, but still he needed 15 minutes to regain his composure as he almost lost his footing some 10 meters off the ground.
@@bobbybooshay8641 the dictionary lists "electrocute" as either to be killed by electric shock or to experience a severe, but not fatal, electric shock. Words change meaning over time.
Yeah he means there is a short inside the windings probably of the step down transformer,hence the fuse operated as it should and as per procedude they used a smaller test fuse (low amp rating) to check the circuit. Nothing out of the ordinary here,its a usual fault finding procedure.
Maybe there is a bad transformer, but you won’t find any utility who has a “procedure” to close in a fuse to test it. You test equipment with meters, not by closing in on a fault. Now…, it is common that linemen “try it” by closing the fuse. But it isn’t a company approved or manufacturer approved method. Nobody will openly condone closing in on a suspected fault. That said, linemen in the field often test equipment or lines by closing the fuse because it can be faster than testing properly.
@@jg3991 you gotta kill that side of the grid to test with a meter. Putting even more people out of power. Might as well test for a bad fuse first before assuming it’s a bad xfmr.
@C S…. LOL! The “grid” as you like to call it is already dead. Look at the video. The lineman is working on a single phase section of line. I know why he did what he did… it’s a fast way to try to get the power back on. It’s the “try it” method. Your statement of taking the grid down should really be, “the lineman wasn’t sure what the problem was, so he “tried it”. Because the fuse blew, doesn’t give a clear indication of the problem…. Still have to isolate down and troubleshoot more. Hahaha…. Gotta take the grid down…. Rich. It’s already down.
@@jg3991 yes it’s part of the grid dummy. And to prove further that you are a dummy, how does the fuse blow if it’s already dead? I only work in power generation and distribution. Wtf would I know 🤷🏻♂️😂
I like these guys. Every time I needed to call they were there within 30 minutes and always professional and kind. Even if I asked questions they seemed interested in explaining it to me.
As an electrician I remember when I was the new guy and they told me to stack live wires on an electrical tray in a salt extraction factory in Manistee Michigan. If I remember correctly it was about 5000V of heavily insulated wire. I had a beard at the time and whenever the ends on my beard touched the wires I could feel like a pin prick on my jaw and cheeks as stray voltage would conduct on the beard hair. I think it was some kind on initiation to working in a factory. I only had to do it once.
sorry...wasn't operator error . that was the second fuse . step down transformer was bad. if he had closed the door too slow there would have been an arc. this just blew
Normally, here in Spain don´t close circuits with charges. I mean, you keep all sources closed and when the circuit is OK then you are clear to go. You dont work with current.
Wildman of the Wynooch ...brave? you dont haave to be brave to work safely.....electrical technicians only feel electricity if they dont practice what they are taught
roflmao you can take the 20ft pole. I AIN'T TOUCHING IT WITH ANYTHING. Like a good neighbor, STAY OVER THERE!!!! Get the FUCK away from me with that thing, HEY!!!!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Did this a lot while working on the Milwaukee Railroad. Almost always after a lightning storm. We didn't have a nice bucket to work from and had to stand on the pole under the fuses. We almost always worked alone and sometimes at night to do this. 4400 volt signal feeder and then 3400 volt trolley feeder right next to it. Bad enough at day when they blew but REALLY bright in the dark with lightning flashing around.
You should not have been working live equipment solo. That has been known to kill and has been illegal since the 90s for the voltage you are talking about, railroad or not.
Wrong… it isn’t illegal for a lone worker to close a fuse, outside the minimum approach distance, with an insulated extendo stick. Please check your facts before saying something inappropriate.
I was in a 75' x 150' metal shop that had High Voltage lines 10 foot from the back side of the metal building I was in. Something shorted out , and it blew all 3 of the fuses at one time. I was told those were 60,000 volt lines. It sounded like a "bomb" going off! It stopped all of us in our tracks as we had no idea what had just happened. A day that will never be forgotten.
Retired lineman from BGE here. Can remember back in the day after a storm. Would be in the middle of the night on a lot line going deep in the woods. We would through in fuses so we could see where the arc was in the woods before the fuse would blow. Saved a lot of time trudging thru the wet woods looking for downed wires or heavy branches on the feeder. Worked every time. A giant flash would mark the spot every time.
Yeah they don't do that anymore. Honestly it's not even worth working at night imo you don't get much done. Especially on a job like that in a right of way through the woods. Those jobs are miserable. A couple hours into dark isn't bad but the all night shift no thanks.
The PPE and techniques used were learned/discovered after blood was shed. Rest in peace to all linemen who were killed in the line of duty and may those practicing today be fortunate enough to finish the career unscaved.
This happened in my neighborhood and the guy was on the pole with the stick . Walked over to see if he was OK and he was already on the ground working hot plastic off his suit and just said I am fine . Gutsy dude .
Our neighbor across the street was a lineman for the city of Burbank, CA. We all called him "Duke" because... well.. it seemed to fit. He had a certain nobility. A man's man. Whenever the weather sucked and somebody's lights were out he was on the job. I think back on him fondly and honor those of his craft. More: I had a crush on his daughter, but nothing ever came of it.
I had a 138KV XFMR fail at about 50 yards. Fortunately I was on the other side of the wall, but the explosion & fireball was like a small nuke. We found ceramic not 10 feet from where I was standing, always where your hard hat. Be careful, be aware, be safe.
I worked for an electrical utility co-operative back in Virginia and let me tell you, these guys earn every single penny of their paycheck. They go out in the worse conditions imaginable while people like you and I are comfortably ensconced under the covers and work with voltages that will kill you in a fraction of a second if you have even a momentary lapse in attention. Hell, you can be killed because of some other idiot rubber-necking as he/she passes you and hits your vehicle while you are 35 feet up in a bucket. No way. Not doing that job. Mikey likes to keep both feet planted firmly on the ground.
DAMMIT!.... I jumped so hard my chest hurts... And yet all I can do is laugh. Whooo.... Yeah linesmen are some brave guys, especially those working on transmission lines. My father worked for TVA for almost 30 years as a hydroelectric operator. Even being in the switch yard you could feel your hair standing a little. I remember a certain pile of scrap metal in the back corner of the yard you could take one piece of metal in hand and rake it across another and see the static discharge. It was nothing major but still pretty cool and a reminder of just how little electricity cares where it goes as long as it's the path of least resistance.
I live in a Condo built in 1970 and still have a fuse box (not a breaker box) located in one of my closets. In 14 years I’ve only had to replace one of the fuses (15 amp?) and was scared to death. Can’t imagine what these guys go through. Unsung heroes.
Try that with a 38KV 3 phase building transformer. The line fuse blew twice on the guy, before the 3rd one worked. Bad part, the guy said he had only 3 fuses and if the last one did not take. "We would be out of power for a couple of hours, until new fuses could be located." We had a few power surges in the system. Lot's of fuses replaced that day.
I'm pretty sure all electrical workers are just big trolls. At least the regular electricians are - so it makes sense that lineman would be that way too. Pretty funny though. lol
Been doing this job for 30 years now. About 25 years ago I closed one with an 8 foot stick that blew the top off the cutout. Ears rang for 10 minutes. I have gotten smarter since then and use longer sticks and hearing protection
Watching this short report with reading the comments, expands my respect for these professionals. Glen Campbell's cover of the Jimmy Webb song about the lineman, was my first introduction to the work of the lineman. It was a hit in the music charts. (Sent from the British Isles)
Meanwhile in my country... Electric commander: hey bro can you go and repair that tower? Electric man:gotcha homie Proceeds to climb up the tower without equipment and fixes the wires barehandedly
My guess is it’s one of those countries where regular people are getting electrocuted regularly cuz of all the missing safety regulations. But yah gotta start somewhere. It was like that here at one point too.
I wanted to be a lineman. I was totally amped up to do the job. I even listened to AC/DC on the way to the interview. They told me my training wasn’t current, which came as a shock.
I once took out 2- 170A 4160V fuses. I was no less than 6 inches from the fuses and it blew up my tester like a grenade. There was a 12" plasma fireball right in front of my face, burning off all hair and ionizing the top layer of skin on my face and arms, they were as black as soot. The panels were new and not marked as 4160V. They were properly marked the next day. We were not allowed to know anything about them until the plant was completely built. Because I was standing on a rubber mat and wore rubber shoes, I survived. I went to the bathroom, washed off, and went right back to work. The night foreman thought I was dead as he was standing right behind me, white as a ghost. These line voltages are no joke. This plant had 3 compressors and an ID fan that ran straight off 4160V.
My Dad used to teach hot sticks school when the method was first devised. Nobody ever was hurt or had an accident, ever. You either live safety with hot sticks or you die.
I like watching it live. Sometimes there is a nice blue spark to accompany the loud crack. We have heavy storm activity where I reside. I usually get to see about three linemen a year working on the lines where I live. Extreme Cold, extreme hot, heavy wind, heavy rain, we have it all. The linemen are always working.
Pretty funny reading the comments, I'm amazed at the number of "electrical experts" out there. For you young linemen and apprentices, that's why you always wear hearing protection when closing a jack door (wish I always had). Our outfit required us to close overhead transformers from the ground the last couple of years before I retired because of lids blowing off.
Our streets line fuse blows up at least twice a year due to squirrel suicide on our transformers (step downs). It’s all the way down the street and it still sounds like a grenade went off on our porch. It’s always fun watching the linemen do their jobs troubleshooting. Sometimes there will be a damaged transformer and this will happen.
I heard a transformer 'explode' like that in Atlanta in like '96. Thought it was a bomb possibly. Atlanta is hot so apparently heat is a factor in that sometimes from what I remember people saying.
TheTeditor M. ,the flux capacitor,hhhmmmmm maybe we will need that for a time machine in case Trump makes WW3,which is really,really not a doubt anymore if the war will happen!!!!! 🤔🤔😬😬😬😬😬😲😲😲😲😲😲😲🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
@@bernardoprovenzanno3142 GREAT! I'm fortunate to have meandered onto your comment. See, I'm having a back firing issue with mine and have begun thinking the problem may be with the points and condensor. I've turboed the mass neutron infuser and reset my vcr, but still getting the dern backfiring. What's your experience with these things- think it could be points and condensor? Gotta get it running for this weekend cuz the wife expects me to bbq chicken in it when her Mom visits.
Glad to see the guy was in full PPE, I'll bet his heart was pumping even my hands are sweaty now after seeing that, my body's reaction to a familiar situation. I work with electric and it's always a tense moment when closing a circuit where there is a known danger of something can go badly wrong. Good testing and PPE always helps. As a side story, I was working on a factory floor on a power machine, the men decided to crowd behind me as I had my face in the electrical cabinet, I knew their trick so I said "ya'll need to stand back when I press this contactor, it could go bad" (I set the scene) - I tried to look nervous and pushed in the contactor in with my screwdriver.. as I did, the leader of the guys shouted "boom!" - they all laffed, what they didn't know was, I pressed in a contactor that wasn't powered up! :) so I laffed at their stupidity.
File this under jobs you could *not* pay me to do. My stepfather did this. Middle of the night, middle of a thunderstorm, middle of a blizzard. Just amazing.
4+ years ago we had to share a transformer with my neighbor uncle that runs a machine shop and ours was a fab shop, after a devastating typhoon hits our town their shop pops the fuses like once a week for almost a month and I had the opportunity to see that shit happen three times.. the engineer told us that during the typhoon, the 200mph winds lifted the shops roof and slammed on a service wire creating a short on the roof and every time a the machineries vibrates the roof grounds and pops a fuse.. I also had an opportunity to train/learn/join these men but due to my height I never truly became a lineman but only as a driver and a bucket truck operator.. I had cousins at work and all of them are 6foot tall or more although some of the hot sticks we use are retractable up to 40ft there are times were we only need hot gloves and extension ladders if the bucket truck is out of commission or is not capable of going through the debris filled roads after windstorms and landslides.. I am very lucky to have never lost a colleague during my time in the field but this is still a very dangerous job and no matter how prepared you are on move from mother nature and you are toast.. literally..
I talked to a lineman years ago and he told me that these fuses are filled with gunpowder and a thin wire fuse runs through the center. When the load is to larger (I.e. Limb on line or bad equipment) the wire heats up and ignites the powder which blows and causes the fuse to swing out of circuit. That way they know which one is out. He told me that our residential line carries 13,000 volts at about 1/2 amp. That feeds the transformer which gives us 208 v single phase residential power.
Actually it’s just a fine wire, no gunpowder. Like any other fuse, overload or short causes it heat up and break. The bang is just from all the gases escaping.
And a normal distribution line in the US carries about 7200V from each phase to ground. So there is 7200V feeding the primary of the transformer. And the current is closer to 400A, not 1/2A. Think of it this way. The electrical panel that serves your house is 240V with maybe a 200A main breaker. 240V*200A=48kW. That's just for one house. Your scenario would be 6.5kW for the entire line.
I'm not a native speaker of this language, so I ran into a beautiful misunderstanding. The title of this video, hehe. Only clicked it because I expected some kind of artillery shell (its fuse) to explose (blow back) on, I dunno man, a soldier from Napoleonic times (lineman). Fuck me, this is way more awesome! I've never seen anything like this!
I work in the standby power industry (generators). I often cross paths with the utility crews when dealing with outages. I’ve been within 100 ft. of a fuse blowing on close and it definitely gets your attention.
I had a 100 amp fuse blow using a 6' switch stick and felt the impact on my face. Middle of the night & my boss missed a span of wire down on a chain link fence. Never again did I use a 6' switch stick! Always an 8 footer.
Hard to tell because it's a pretty quick shot of the ratio (step down) but it looks like you've still got the load side lead on. Just wondering why you didn't stand it off to completely isolate the ratio from the rest of the circuit when you tested it, to guarantee that's the source of the fault.
@@Football5198 Yup, should always patrol the circuit first but once you've done that and found nothing obvious, which I'm sure every lineman commenting here has and you've got a fuse down, it could be many things, I.E. lightning shot, phases got together, animal, tree, etc. or as in this case a bad step down. If the fuse holds with it isolated from the rest of the circuit, obviously it's good and the problem is or was elsewhere. If the fuse doesn't hold with it isolated, at the very least you know you have a bad step down that needs changing but you could also have or had a problem downstream as well.
Had a squirrel get zapped on the pole behind our house. Sounded just like this only MUCH louder! Lineman that came out cracked "if you're partial to squirrel there's supper." And pointed at the fried dead carcass at the base of the pole. I passed on the offer, but during the nite something else enjoyed the snack as next day just the tail was left! LOL
My grandad was a linesman, one of the best from the old days. My dad is a linesman and he turns it into an art form. He teaches people that would class themselves as ‘veterans’. I’m a linesman, I make mistakes but I climb well and I work hard. My grandad set the standard in Derbyshire, my dad improved it, I can’t see how it could get any better
