oldtanker

Well-known Member
There have been a lot of tractor and equipment accidents lately. One a young man was badly burned when his grain cart came in contact with high voltage lines. Where he got in trouble was after he successfully got clear he attempted to go back and extinguish the fire that started. Got zapped and fell into the fire. No tractor or piece of equipment is worth your life! In a case like that once clear stay back. Let trained people handle it from there.

In the event of coming into contact with high power lines if possible stay put until the power is shut off. If what you are in/on catches fire and you have to get off jump as far as possible. If you try climbing down once you foot contacts you are a ground. After you are on the ground shuffle away. The electricity can travel through the ground an a foot breaking contact can make you a conductor. Remember some high power lines are now buried. You could hit them with your dirt bucket, backhoe or post hole auger. Sometimes they are not as deep as they are supposed to be.

In another case a guy walked behind a combine without the operators knowledge. He was killed when the operator backed over him. Nothing we are doing out here, be it a hobby or a living is worth your life. Please be careful!

Rick
 
Thanks for the safety reminder!
I have to do a lot on my own and must take the time to do
things without getting hurt.
I have a 180 pound weight mounted on top of my auger to help
penetrate the red clay here.
I must have some dedicated guardian angels!
Greg
 

A comment from my experience with "trained people." Just keep your eyes wide open as they arrive and go to work. Our town's long time fire chief had a lot of life experience before becoming chief. The new one, and some new officers, not so much. Common sense is defined loosely as life experience. Often in the fire service young aggressive guys with a fair amount of training, but also a fair amount of attitude, get promoted into officer positions. Being young they can lack in life experience, and formal training can never, and is never expected to prepare them for everything, yet some will believe that they and their crew know how to handle anything. My advice is to watch carefully, and respectfully give advice, if you see something about to be done in what you can see from your experience is in dangerous manner.
 
I have a neighbor out of work across the street because he thought the chainsaw chaps were to hot to wear cut himself from beyond my intelligence ankle to knee.
if I am going out to chainsaw I wear the face shield and chaps I cant afford a accident.
I have been educated well beyond my intelligence level when it comes to safety.
The stuff I have to wear doing Hot Work on electrical equipment in my opinion leaves you deaf, you cant feel your hands with hot gloves on you cant see behind a green tinted arc flash rated face shield and safety glasses.
but that one what If when something is not as its supposed to be could take my eyesight hearing and burn me beyond recognition, or even death.
that is why I wear it everyday every time.
you cant be to safe.
 
JULY, 1928.

My dad, a former "barnstormer" took off from a farmer's field in his Jenny. There was a large thunderstorm WEST of the field at the same time.

As he was about to clear the power lines at the end of the field, a down-wash of wind pushed the airplane into the power lines.

The airplane stayed suspended in the wires and the main fuse in the power company's building blew.

My dad and his passenger jumped from the plane which was about 20 ft. and started running.

In about 5 minutes the person on duty at the power plant put in a new fuse and reset the circuit. It rained fire for quite awhile.

Next morning the local newspaper had headlines "FLYING MACHINE PUT ALL ELECTRICITY OFF FOR 10 MILE RADIUS" and caused black-out in 3 towns.

Moral to the story : Was their lucky day!

John,PA
 
(quoted from post at 07:04:37 10/31/14) JULY, 1928.

My dad, a former "barnstormer" took off from a farmer's field in his Jenny. There was a large thunderstorm WEST of the field at the same time.

As he was about to clear the power lines at the end of the field, a down-wash of wind pushed the airplane into the power lines.

The airplane stayed suspended in the wires and the main fuse in the power company's building blew.

My dad and his passenger jumped from the plane which was about 20 ft. and started running.

In about 5 minutes the person on duty at the power plant put in a new fuse and reset the circuit. It rained fire for quite awhile.

Next morning the local newspaper had headlines "FLYING MACHINE PUT ALL ELECTRICITY OFF FOR 10 MILE RADIUS" and caused black-out in 3 towns.

Moral to the story : Was their lucky day!

John,PA

Problem there is from what I've read is some of the mega voltage lines don't have breakers or fuses because there is so much power it will jump the gap on a fuse holder or breaker. That is info from a heavy equipment board after we viewed a 10 minute vid of power continually being live with a boom truck in contact. A guy who works for a power company explained it. That power will be on until someplace the line burns through.

So yes was very luck for them. My BIL took the lines down in his yard a couple of years ago. The transformer right there popped a fuse. Line had been there forever but he got careless while moving tree branches with a loader on a big tractor, something like 185 PTO HP. No damage to the tractor because of the breaker but he had to rent a generator big enough to power his dairy operation. I think the cost injured that tight [expletive deleted by moderator] far more than physical injury would have!

Rick
 
Thanks! Actually the year was 1924. And, to this date, the "FAMILY" never got a bill for any damages.

Luck has a lot to do with a day of living.... Here,in the home, we just say, if there is a fatality, "THE GUY HAD BAD LUCK"!

Lincoln View.
 
In another life, I got paid to jump out of airplanes. (and shoot guns & blow chit up). I was the jumpmaster on a night training jump in the mountains of VA. The drop zone was surrounded on three sides by a river. And it had a power line running right down the middle of it to an old abandoned farm house. We were assured that the power had been cut off.

Uh-huh.

I put the troops out on the first 2 passes w/ no problems.

On the third pass, I saw no lights on the ground & never got a green light at the door. The AF loadmaster got my attention & told me that the jump had been cancelled & we were heading back to base.

It wasn't until we landed that I found out the problem. The chute of one of the jumpers caught the power lines; when they got pulled together, the transformer went off w/ a bang & a flash that everyone said lit that valley up like daylight.

Because the jumper was still in the air, he wasn't hurt.

Glad it wasn't me; I would have probably needed a clean pair of drawers.
 
(quoted from post at 07:37:49 10/31/14)
A comment from my experience with "trained people." Just keep your eyes wide open as they arrive and go to work. Our town's long time fire chief had a lot of life experience before becoming chief. The new one, and some new officers, not so much.

Guy I used to work with told me the story of how he saved the whole town from the firefighters. His family owned a propane company and he happened to arrive on the scene of a train derailment where a propane tanker was burning. The firefighters were just about to put the flames out when he pitched a fit about it and got them to agree to wait until the fire chief arrived. They wouldn't have listened, but the chief was just a minute or so away. When the chief arrived, one of the firefighters told the chief that "We were just about to put the fire out when this guy stopped us." The chief replied that "It's a good thing you listened to him. If you'd put the fire out, the propane would have just flowed along the ground until it found a source of ignition and the whole thing would have gone up at once."
 
(quoted from post at 10:39:36 10/31/14)
(quoted from post at 07:37:49 10/31/14)
A comment from my experience with "trained people." Just keep your eyes wide open as they arrive and go to work. Our town's long time fire chief had a lot of life experience before becoming chief. The new one, and some new officers, not so much.

Guy I used to work with told me the story of how he saved the whole town from the firefighters. His family owned a propane company and he happened to arrive on the scene of a train derailment where a propane tanker was burning. The firefighters were just about to put the flames out when he pitched a fit about it and got them to agree to wait until the fire chief arrived. They wouldn't have listened, but the chief was just a minute or so away. When the chief arrived, one of the firefighters told the chief that "We were just about to put the fire out when this guy stopped us." The chief replied that "It's a good thing you listened to him. If you'd put the fire out, the propane would have just flowed along the ground until it found a source of ignition and the whole thing would have gone up at once."

If memory serves me correct it was 1962 in Kingman AZ. where a railroad propane tanker had fire from another source impinging on the TOP of the tank. After awhile it blew with the strength of the Nagasaki A Bomb. and pretty much leveled the town. It was called a BLEVE foe Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion.
 
Bruce, the one thing I learned is never jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Do you ever get the shivers when you think back on the time that we felt we were all invincible. Ill shut-up and pass the ammo. LB Master of the Obvious.
 
My brother's neighbor was using his skidsteer to push log ends into
a burn pile, got hung up on a stump, tipping enough to not only
spill the contents of the fuel tank out on the ground, but activate
that safety bar they have. Couldn't get out and burned to death. If
that wasn't bad enough, his teenage daughter watched it happen,
unable to help.

I always cut stumps as flush as I can.
 
In the vein of general safety:I was a commercial Carpenter for many years,and saw many accidents. One was an elevator man who insisted in leaning over the side of the shaft to speak to someone a couple of floors down,when the elevator platform came down,severing his torso from his lower body. I was 12 floors down,installing the coreboard walls that form the fireproof elevator shaft and stairwells. The torso and about a gallon of blood fell onto the walkboards where I was and gave me a bath! No amount of safety can negate stupidity! In another instance,I was told to frame the ceiling of an electrical room with a large swithchgear,open faced,to which I declined. The person who didn't decline ran a scaffold into the box,and was fried between the switch and the framing. lha
 
Thanks for the reminder, Rick. Whether you farm professionally like you, Bruce, and me, or are a hobby farmer or tractor enthusiast, the fall season is the most dangerous time for us all. We all feel the crunch of winter coming and the need to get our crops in, firewood cut, and all of those other projects done before the weather turns bad.

Colin
 

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