A 40-year-old male meter technician had just completed a 7-week basic lineman training course. He worked as a meter technician during normal working hours and as a lineman during unplanned out-ages. One evening, he was called to repair a residential power outage. By the time he arrived at the site of the outage, he had already worked 2 hours of overtime and worked 14 straight hours the day before. At the site, a tree limb had fallen across an overhead powerline. The neutral wire in the line was severed, and the two energized 120-volt wires were disconnected. The worker removed the tree limb and climbed up a power pole to reconnect the three wires. He was wearing insulated gloves, a hard hat, and safety glasses.

He prepared the wires to be connected. While handling the wires, one of the energized wires caught the cuff of his left glove and pulled the cuff down. The conductor contacted the victim's forearm near the wrist. He was electrocuted and fell backwards. He was wearing a climbing belt, which left him hanging upside down from the pole. Paramedics arrived 5 minutes after the contact. The power company lowered his dead body 30 minutes later.

Several factors may have contributed to this incident. Below are some ways to eliminate these risk factors.

• Ask for assistance when you are assigned tasks that cannot be safely completed alone. The task assigned to the victim could not have been done safely by only one person.
  
  
• Do not work overtime performing hazardous tasks that are not part of your normal assignments.
  
  
• Employees should only be given tasks that they are qualified to perform. All employees below the journeyman level should be supervised.

A worker was attempting to correct an electrical problem involving two non-operational lamps. He examined the circuit in the area where he thought the problem was located. He had not shut off the power at the circuit breaker panel and did not test the wires to see if they were live. He was electrocuted when he grabbed the two live wires with his left hand. He collapsed to the floor and was found dead.

• Employers should not allow work to be done on electrical circuits unless an effective lock-out/tag-out program is in place.
  
  
• No work should be done on energized electrical circuits. Circuits must be shut off, locked out, and tagged out. Even then, you must test the circuit before beginning work to confirm that it is de-energized ("dead")

A crew of 7 workers was painting a 33-foot sign at a shopping mall. The crew used tubular welded frame scaffolding that was 31 feet tall and made up of several tiers. The sign was partially painted when the crew was instructed to move the scaffolding so that concrete could be poured for an access road. The crew moved the scaffolding 30 feet without disassembling it. An overhead powerline was located about 10 feet away from the scaffolding. After the concrete hardened, the workers lift-ed the scaffolding to move it back to the sign. The top tier came loose, fell, and contacted the powerline. All seven workers were knocked away from the scaffolding. Two died; five were hospitalized.

You must take certain precautions when working with scaffolding.

• Scaffolding should not be moved until all potential safety hazards are identified and controlled. In this case, the scaffolding should have been taken apart before it was moved.
  
  
• Locking pins must be used to secure tiers to one another.
  
  
• Always make sure you have enough time to complete your assignment safely. If you are rushed, you may be more likely to take deadly shortcuts (such as failing to dismantle scaffolding before moving it).
  
  
• Employers must have a written safety program that includes safe work procedures and hazard recognition.

A company was contracted to install wiring and fixtures in a new office complex. The third floor was being prepared in a hurry for a new tenant, and daily changes to the electrical system blueprints were arriving by fax. The light fixtures in the office were mounted in a metal grid that was fastened to the ceiling and properly grounded.

A 23-year-old male apprentice electrician was working on a light fixture when he contacted an energized conductor. He came down from the fiberglass ladder and collapsed. Apparently, he had contacted the "hot" conductor while also in contact with the metal grid. Current passed through his body and into the ground-ed grid. Current always takes a path to ground. In this case, the worker was part of that path.

He was dead on arrival at a nearby hospital. Later, an investigation showed that the victim had cross-wired the conductors in the fixture by mistake. This incorrect wiring allowed electricity to flow from a live circuit on the completed section of the building to the circuit on which the victim was working.

Below are some safety procedures that should have been followed in this case. Because they were ignored, the job ended in death.

• Before work begins, all circuits in the immediate work area must be shut off, locked out, and tagged out-then tested to confirm that they are de-energized.
  
  
• Wiring done by apprentice electricians should be checked by a journeyman.
  
  
• A supervisor should always review changes to an original blueprint in order to identify any new hazards that the changes might create.

An employee was climbing a metal ladder to hand an electric drill to the journeyman installer on a scaffold about 5 feet above him. When the victim reached the third rung of the ladder, he received an electrical shock that killed him. An investigation showed that the grounding prong was missing from the extension cord attached to the drill. Also, the cord's green grounding wire was, at times, contacting the energized black wire. Because of this contact with the "hot" wire, the entire length of the grounding wire and the drill's frame became energized. The drill was not double-insulated.

To avoid deadly incidents like this one, take these precautions:

• Make certain that approved GFCI's or equipment grounding systems are used at construction sites.
  
  
• Use equipment that provides a permanent and continuous path to ground. Any fault current will be safely diverted along this path.
  
  
• Inspect electrical tools and equipment daily and remove damaged or defective equipment from use right away.

The site was wet. Humidity was high and the carpenter was sweating. Reportedly, he was mildly shocked throughout the morning and replaced the extension cord he was using in an effort to stop the shocks. At one point, as he was climbing down a makeshift ladder constructed from a floor truss, he shifted the power saw from his right hand to his left hand and was shocked. He fell from the ladder into a puddle of water, still holding the saw. The current had caused his hand to contract, and he was "locked" to the saw. A co-worker disconnected the power cord to the saw. CPR was given, but the shock was fatal.

Attention to these general safety principles could have prevented this death.

• Any and all electrical equipment involved in a malfunction should be taken out of service immediately. The carpenter should have taken the saw out of service, not just the extension cord. (As it turns out, the saw was the source of the shocks, not the cord.)
  
  
• Although the homemade extension cord does not seem to have contributed to this incident, it should not have been used.
  
  
• The floor truss should not have been used as a ladder. For climbing, use only approved ladders or other equipment designed specifically for climbing.
  
  
• Do not work in wet areas. The water should have been removed from the floor as soon as it was found. Humidity and perspiration can also be hazards. Try to stay as dry as possible, be alert, and take action to protect yourself when needed.
  
  
• OSHA requires that all receptacles at construction sites that are not part of the permanent wiring have GFCI's.
  
  
• Be aware that shocks can cause you to lose your balance and fall, often resulting in more severe injury.