There was a structure fire yesterday at an unfinished and abandoned house with an attached garage. The house has been unoccupied for more than a decade and there were no electricity lines to the house. There was however a telephone line still running through some trees to the house (more on that later!). After extinguishment and during overhaul a firefighter from a neighboring fire service brushed against a branch near the telephone line and received a14,400 volt shock! He was transported by ambulance and spent the night in hospital under observation but has since been released and returned home. It seems at some point the telephone line which traversed the road in front of the house had been struck by probably a large vehicle and flew up and became tangled with the high tension electric lines, and started feeding 14,400 volts to the house through the telephone wire. We also found signs inside that indicated the hot telephone wiring had started fires inside before that just hadn’t taken off until yesterday.
LESSONS LEARNED:
We learned that a 4 or 5 strand copper telephone wire could and can transport high voltage electricity and we will be more careful around all lines in the future.
