Author - Chris
Submitted By -Backfeed 3
I thought you might like a heads up on a near miss i had several weeks ago. I am an electrician in K.C.area, got a call at a large area apartment complex at apx. 12 midnight from their maintenance man, had an apartment with no power. He said the main breaker in the meter bank that fed this unit was bad( this is a common problem in this complex, been there dozens of times). He stated it could wait till first thing in the morning and that I could do it then. He gave me the building number and apartment number and I went back to bed. The next morning I arrived at the job at 7:30 and started to change the breaker, now this is somewhat involved, several metal covers close to energized buss, that kind of thing, well I got all that taken care of and preceded to remove the load wires from the breaker. After that was complete, I started to loosen the bracket that holds the breaker in place, BOOM! Turns out the maintenance man had back-fed the system. My screw driver shank had touched one of the load wires, and when my driver contacted the mounting screw -- BOOM. Thank goodness for safety glasses, gloves and F.R.shirts ! Never assume the obvious! Next time i'll be more vigilant, Work safe. Chris in K.C.