Subject says all that's known so far; they've been taken to the hospital. Heard this on Roger Hedgecock Show from San Diego radio (KSDO AM1130 - Internet for me) just moments ago. Heck, they could have been climbing the fence.

-- warren blim (mr_little@yahoo.com), January 14, 2000

Answers

They were not just people. They were power company workers. So they probably were not climbing the fence like kids or terrorists.

According to the VP, they were checking voltage as part of a typical maintenance schedule. Customers in the area noticed a power surge.

Workers probably get burned/electricuted periodically during maintenance operations, so these incidents should be expected. Maybe one of those remote systems was acting up.

Oh, for those in SD area, the radio man says it's KOGO. Maybe the broadcast.com text is wrong. I just copied/pasted the logo :=)

-- warren blim (mr_little@yahoo.com), January 14, 2000.

Could be a switching problem....

-- ~~~~ (~~~@~~~.xcom), January 14, 2000.

Four years ago a very good friend of mine was killed in a substation explosion. He inadvertantly contacted a live 66KV bus bar, (while working on adjacent plant), and caused a flash over. He was the conductor and the explosion was his clothing, hair. etc igniting inside an electrical fire ball. During my years in the electricity industry I have known of other workers to be killed or injured by similar mishaps, but in every single case, the underlying fault was simply their own Human Error.

It will be interesting to hear just what the cause was here, but there is no way that a remote control or an automatic control failure could cause such injuries. Before any worker goes near potentially live equipment it is isolated, switches are manually locked open, and earthed.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), January 14, 2000.

Accidents happen...

25 years ago, a friend of mine, looked like a greek god, smoked too much wacky tobacco one night... lived in San Diego, climbed a power pole to get a better view of the sunset...

Crawled into a high voltage line, fried his ass...

Was still a pretty boy, until he took his turtleneck off...

Electricity boo-boos are bad!

-- Carl (clilly@goentre.com), January 15, 2000.