Home > Safety Information Story by Jack Craighead (edited) This accident occurred at AMI in Pocatello, Idaho. I received permission to share the story and these photographs. It is a good lesson learned for all of us, but especially for electricians. This is a story of an electrician that was being helpful, but taking short cuts and he ended up being hurt. The photos in the link below are of his hands after making contact with a live 110v line. "But it's only 110 volts ...", have you ever heard that line? We tend to take lower voltage work less seriously than higher voltage work. This was work on a 110v light ballast. While performing other electrical work the electrical subcontractor was asked to fix a fluorescent light fixture. No pre-job brief, or Lockout/Tagout was performed. An apprentice electrician was changing the ballast with the light fixture energized. The accident occurred when the electrician stripped the wrong wire and got severely shocked. He was holding a wire nut in his mouth at the time of the accident. The shock caused the electrician to inhale the wire nut into his lung and his right hand was badly burned. He has had three surgeries. The first surgery was to remove the wire nut he inhaled. The wire nut went all the way to the bottom of his lung. The two other surgeries included amputations necessary to try to regain some use of his right hand. This is a big "heads-up" to all of us that do electrical work at home or at work. Electricity knows no boundary if proper safety procedures are not followed. As our rules to live by reads: "Test electrical equipment to make sure it is de-energized before touching" and "Always wear proper power protection equipment, Use low voltage rubber gloves when working on exposed conductors or equipment energized between 50 volts and 600 volts." These photos are very graphic - View only if you can handle looking at actual injuries of this nature. They are provided for the sole purpose to heighten your safety awareness.

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