>>So how DID you break the human circuit?<< Luck. I think that was the difference, in some situational-physics way, between myself and the guy who died.
I mean I know I was lucky, and he apparently wasn't.
The article said he was cleaning rain gutters, using a droplight ~
~ because true to Oregon, it was the dark "daylight" of constant rain.
You think, "Well, it's really stupid to be cleaning rain gutters on a rainy stormy day."
Will you get real, please? Do you live here? I don't think so.
What he was doing was reasonable and necessary. Let's just pretend that's true, rather than fight about what I would also call ridiculous anywhere else.
He made a couple of mistakes, I will bet; even though the article said none of them; and I think it really SHOULD have explained to people EXACTLY what happened. Like a moral, journalistic responsibility. I mean we all think he was stupid anyway; right? What's the difference? It's not like they can embarrass him. And maybe he wasn't. Stupid.
Electrocution is all about making ground contact. Making a good ground. The better ground, the better shock pathway you're going to make and the higher amperage electricity is going to go through you.
People don't understand ground, and don't think of it.
The other death fact is what path the contact to ground follows. Is it from one hand to the other across the chest/heart, or between two fingers of the same hand. (About to be burned.) Human bodies conduct the current across really well, so it goes fairly direct fom A to B. You hope it's not thru the head or heart.
1) I'll bet his droplight wasn't extension-corded to a GFCI circuit.
2) That would have solved everything. Just remember that. ALL of my outlets are GFCI; and are on construction sites; or I won't use em. Period. You can die if you want. I nearly saw it happen. In 78. It's that easy. Especially here, where everything is deeply soaked, even as we speak. Deeply, deeply soggy; and draining away electricity for fun. Sucking like gasoline does to a tossed match.
3) He could have been wearing non-porous rubber gloves, and avoided even a GFCI pop.
$) Aluminum ladder, although this isn't necessary. But I'll bet it was.
I can bet four bucks, this is what happened:
A) His droplight had a short. This is a DUH, and you ALWAYS believe every goddam thing you own has a short in it. You just assume it. Period, man. Stupid fuk.
B) He was NOT on a GFCI. No ifs. That's a five dollar bet. They work.
C) He was on an aluminum ladder, and even with wet hands.
(This is relevant to how I survived, kinda.) The timing isn't possible to know, because unless he removed the bulb and stuck his finger in the socket, the light was hot from the moment it was plugged in, and could have zapped his balls off the moment he stepped outside. But, your shoes are some insulation. So we don't know when.
Anyway, all we have to do is imagine when he made a complete circuit by grounding the droplight to something. Either the wet metal gutters or the metal ladder sitting in mud would separately make a really good ground. Good as you can get next to a ground rod. The gutters run to the ground, down the downspouts. So 50/50 he was up at the top of the ladder if it was wooden, and grabbed the light and the gutter; or was anywhere on the ladder if it was metal, and grabbed the droplight and made a perfect connection from his light hand thru his chest across to the hand holding the aluminum ladder. He went into muscle and/or heart fibrillation right there and could not get off the ladder. Literally got stuck to it.
And then fried, very slowly. Cooked. They probably found him ON the ladder. But maybe on the ground, with the light in his fibbing hand, where that contact finished him off and gave him a stinky bald spot.
I was working under a sink. I was younger and stupid; I think this was the same year, but before, the incident I saw in 77-78.
I was working under a kitchen sink in a house with all metal plumbing. I was using a droplight my father gave me, that was also metal. It was an indoor circuit, that was not yet GFCI.
The drain lines, the trap and arm, were brass, connected to cast iron that ran right down to the ground under the house into the dirt. Full Ground.
The light had the perennial short, I didn't assume it, didn't know it, which is the same, and I had it in my right hand, and reached under and took full hold of the inch and a half brass pipe with my left. Like the way you hold a coke bottle.
The current immediately shot across my heart, and locked the hand on the light and the hand on the pipe. I could not open either hand. I could tell the current was enough to kill me. Well, it was; up to 20 clean and perfect amps. It hurt like hell. My jaw fused shut. My head HURT. A small shock does not help you to imagine the intensity of a large one, although they are similar. I know from reading this is as close as you can get to electrocution and survive.
So I was in the same position as the ignoramus on the ladder. Stuck, and cooking.
I knew if I could get rid of one of the contacts, the light or the pipe, the source or the ground, I could stop it. Get free. But your hand is gripping both things like an electric monkey. I knew the light would just stay stuck in my right hand, no matter where I moved it. (This is what happened to the person I saw almost die, with a circular saw stuck in their grip. The source stuck in their fibrillating grip. It was horrible; and filled with screaming.) (You don't want to hear men screaming.)
So I had to break open the left hand grip, and I had no hands to do it. Because then I would be on wooden floors, not wet grass like Mr Unfortunate. It would stop. (HE was doomed. The light would still be in his hand.)
(Our locations was the first difference. And why outdoor GFCI's are crucial.)
I had leaned in under the sink on one knee; not sitting cross-legged. Thank goodness. Cuz I was able to contol my left leg, which was braced against the bottom front of the cabinet in my work boot, and out of the paralyzing flow lane across the middle of my upper body. I was able to communicate with it from my head through my spine. I shoved backwards with the leg, on all the adrenalin I could muster; praying for enough, and my hand broke loose of the pipe; the way a tired person's would hanging from a chin-up bar.
~
Then I kind of counted my stars. |
