electrocution - Gizmodo

posts about #electrocution more →
Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
Photography Through Electrocution
Girl Dies by Electrocution While Twitting in Bathtub, Apocalypse Draws Nearer
Retro Illustrations Show 30 Ways To Die From Electrocution
Victor Mouse Trap Is Really an Electrocution Dungeon

Your version of Internet Explorer is not supported. Please upgrade to the most recent version in order to view comments.

Dsmvwl Admin Promote to frontpage Approve user Ban user ×

lonney
10/09/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
It's not hard to believe at all, reading through the comments its noted that when the line tripped the whole town lost power.

So that line would of been up to 66kV, they are usually aluminium strands around a steel core. A tree being a good part water and with roots into the ground makes a good path to ground (ever wonder why lightning loves trees?). At those kids of voltages + the current available, there is enough potential to overcome the resistance of the tree to ground, and smoke it up real good!

And the comment about the line resetting is also correct, the first time it tripped after first big *flash*bang* it would of attempted to reset, hence the second *flash*bang* at which point the line would of stayed tripped.

Looked and sounded pretty real to me! Great vid!!
Reply

FredicvsMaximvs promoted this comment lonney was starred lonney was unstarred

rjshpd
10/09/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
I am a retired firefighter and I work in the electrical Industry...

Yes this happens - I have witnessed it personally several times.

Several Comments:

These appear to be local distribution primaries; the voltage can be 14,000 volts line-line or more.

The wires are not insulated. Primary distribution lines are seldom insulated. At these voltages there are not many insulators that can isolate this voltage and be even reasonably cost effective. Insulation also lowers the temperature rating of the wiring resulting in a lower current rating; this would require larger wire for the same current - thus, again, more cost. These are bare stranded wire insulated on glass or ceramic insulators.

If you watch carefully you can see the current working its way towards the ground. At first the tree presents enough impedance, (resistance), that the current flowing through the tree does not trip the protection devices. As the heat creates a carbonized path through the tree eventually the low impedance path reaches the ground and you have the flash from the extremely high current flow followed by the reclosure trip.

The protective safeties, (reclosure device), are designed to reconnect the circuit after a time-out period. If the short is still there it will trip again; this occurs at the end of the video. The reclosure device is designed to retry three times and then lock-out. After that they must be reset manually.

If this was faked then it was done very close to what a real event would look like.

The other thing not really presented by the video is that these events are really really loud. I have had co-workers get ruptured ear drums from being too close to a high energy event such as this.

Anyway - my 2 cents.......
Reply

FredicvsMaximvs promoted this comment rjshpd was starred rjshpd was unstarred

Ravlen
10/09/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
I really find this hard to believe. I used to live in Halifax, which has literally, HUNDREDS of trees up close to the power lines.

Look at the photo here, on the left you can just make out the power pole, going up into the trees.
[www.timmelfabrics.com]

I've never heard of any fires in Halifax resulting from this.

The tree in that video is much taller than the line, why didn't it go up in flames all the previous times it was windy?

Lastly, power lines are INSULATED! If it wasn't insulated, it would short out every time it rained. This video has clearly been faked in some way.
Reply

Ravlen was starred Ravlen was unstarred

Thews
10/09/09

@Ravlen: The part about the insulation protecting it from water is a bit suspect. There would have to be a path of water to ground and those ceramic insulators that the wire runs through are designed so that doesn't happen and even then there is still leakage. Getting an electric wire wet is fine as long as it doesn't create a path to ground. Furthermore, Im not even sure that all wires are insulated.
Reply

Rex the Decadent promoted this comment Thews was starred Thews was unstarred

MonkeyPaw
10/08/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
I actually work in this sector of the utility industry. What just happened was a tree coming into contact with a transmission line. What you saw was electricity attempting to find a path to ground, which is why the molten glow was heading down the trunk of the tree. Essentially, the high-resistance carbon in the tree is being turned into low-resistance graphite along this path to ground, and once that path reaches ground, you get an instant high-voltage fault, which is represented by the explosion. What you saw after the explosion was the system shutting down and attempting to re-energize, hence the second explosion. Typically, after a third try, the line remains dead. This is why you never ever ever go near downed lines or situations like these!

Oh, and as for the fire department helping out? They couldn't do anything if they wanted to. Had they messed with the tree, they probably would have been killed by 69,000+ volts. The utility has to shut the line down to make this situation safe, which won't likely happen over the phone. People call in so many non-emergencies regarding utility lines that it makes it impossible to determine what calls are actually critical and which ones are people exaggerating to get what they want.
Reply

FredicvsMaximvs promoted this comment MonkeyPaw was starred MonkeyPaw was unstarred

bikehorn86
10/08/09

In reply to Girl Dies by Electrocution While Twitting in Bathtub, Apocalypse Draws Nearer
Maybe you have a chip on your shoulder about Twitter users(personally I hate Twitter) but as an electrician I can't help pointing out weak electrical safety. If they had ground fault circuit interrupters as mandatory equipment in Romania, she would have survived and maybe not even felt much of a shock before the power was cut. Granted, handling live electrical equipment while immersed in water is Darwin award material, but her death could have been prevented if the exact same incident had occurred where GFCIs are mandatory such as Canada where we have some of the toughest electrical safety rules. In the UK these are called RCDs or residual current devices. Basically they work by detecting if power is going somewhere it shouldn't....normally it goes out of the black(active/hot) wire and back through the white(neutral). If 99 electrons go out but only 93 come back, that means six leaked somewhere and maybe did so through a person into the ground - while shocking them. If it senses this condition the power will immediately be cut before a fatality can occur.

I've heard of a lot of deaths like this occurring in India not due to people twittering in the tub but due to people using immersion water heaters to warm up water before bathing. These are extremely unsafe ungrounded devices and even if they have got the ground pin many people just break the ground pin off to make it fit an old outlet or worse, the ground/bond connection is broken somewhere in the wall. Now imagine you've got a live electrode in the water with no safety ground and no GFCI protection, and you stick your hand in to check the temperature while standing on a wet floor...Zapppppp, you'll never know if it was hot enough because you'll be dead.
Reply

OrbitalGun promoted this comment bikehorn86 was starred bikehorn86 was unstarred

Lizard_King
10/08/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
After a day of swaying and arcing, the township got to work removing a rotten tree in my neighborhood last night. During the day, an officer was on watch to make sure no one went near the tree, until the Peco truck and tree service arrived.

They broke out the chainsaw at 1:30am. I guess noise ordinances don't count when you have a hardhat and a township contract.
Reply

Lizard_King was starred Lizard_King was unstarred

robo
10/08/09

@Lizard_King: Your story lacks explosions, fire, or ironic deaths. I nearly fell asleep.
Reply

Lizard_King promoted this comment robo was starred robo was unstarred

Lizard_King
10/09/09

@robo: I know, right. The chainsaw noise would have kept you awake, trust me.

I watched this video and my first thought was "Lucky". Had this happened up the street, the Fire Department. less than a block away, would have had the whole burnt tree felled in an hour.
Reply

Lizard_King was starred Lizard_King was unstarred

Nathan Obbards
10/08/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
There's no way a tree could have caught on fire and gone down in a blaze of glory from power lines alone. I smell a conspiracy here. Someone knew that the tree was going to rub against that power line, so they installed incendiary devices in there to ignite the tree when it brushed the wire. Wake up sheeple! Of course the incendiary devices will be hard to find, but if you look close and hard enough, you can find evidence. Just what do they have to gain from all these lies? Do they want to go to war on power lines now?
Reply

Margatron promoted this comment Nathan Obbards was starred Nathan Obbards was unstarred

JackMatt
10/08/09

@Nathan Obbards: I don't know.... the lines there are at less 1K Volts.... thats a lot of heat coming off when the tree makes ground. Also how did they make a incendiary devices reignite every time the power reset? and 3rd to place a device for that is a lot of work for a little video. You have to find some way of getting it in the tree right where the lines would hit it. You would need a chary picker or something. I claim real.
Reply

GitEmSteveDave_IsGWaving promoted this comment JackMatt was starred JackMatt was unstarred

GitEmSteveDave_Isn'tFreshPerked
10/08/09

@JackMatt: I can get 30 Blaze of Glory Truthers who are scientists to say you are wrong, and they found evidence of burned aluminum, which could only have come from incendiary devices.
Reply

JackMatt
10/08/09

@GitEmSteveDave_IsWaving: LMAO! ROFL!!!! Your wrong, the truth is it was a missile from a US war ship. :)
Reply

JackMatt was starred JackMatt was unstarred

GitEmSteveDave_Isn'tFreshPerked
10/09/09

@JackMatt: That's why this video wasn't complete! When they turned, it was because the missile was inbound!
Reply

qtiphead88
10/08/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
this was in my hometown...it cut the power off for the whole town....the fire department doesn't respond to claims like this unless there is fire present...the person who called it in didn't report fire...so it just got passed onto the power company...who didn't do anything until after the fact because the person who called it in didn't give all of the necessary details...
Reply

GitEmSteveDave_IsGWaving promoted this comment qtiphead88 was starred qtiphead88 was unstarred

GitEmSteveDave_Isn'tFreshPerked
10/08/09

@qtiphead88: More details/proof?
Reply

qtiphead88
11/14/09

@GitEmSteveDave_HurtHisKnee: [www.bellinghamherald.com]

look familiar

#electrocution
Reply

qtiphead88 was starred qtiphead88 was unstarred

GitEmSteveDave_Isn'tFreshPerked
10/08/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
In NJ, that tree would go down in a blaze of glory.
Reply

Jack of all Tirades R.O.A.C.H.
10/08/09

@GitEmSteveDave_IsGWaving: I think it was wanted, dead or alive.
Reply

GitEmSteveDave_IsGWaving promoted this comment

GitEmSteveDave_Isn'tFreshPerked
10/09/09

@Jack of all Tirades R.O.A.C.H.: On a steel line, it fried.
Reply

Avizzv92
10/08/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
(Two trees in the background watching) - "He was talking about it, but I never took him seriously."
Reply

Homerjay is utterly alone. promoted this comment Edited by Avizzv92 at 10/08/09 7:02 PM Avizzv92 was starred Avizzv92 was unstarred

Hello Mister Walrus
10/08/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
Take that, tree. Always up to no good.
Reply

EBone
10/08/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
DPW 1, Tree 0
Reply

EBone was starred EBone was unstarred

Lego Addict
10/08/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
i have to call shenanigans... theres no way the tree would suddenly stop being on fire only to spark up like a christmas tree in an instant.... awesome though :)
Reply

GitEmSteveDave_IsGWaving promoted this comment Edited by Lego Addict at 10/08/09 6:54 PM Lego Addict was starred Lego Addict was unstarred

GitEmSteveDave_Isn'tFreshPerked
10/08/09

@Lego Addict: We have a call of Shenanigans!
Reply

Homerjay is utterly alone.
10/08/09

@Lego Addict: When the flame stopped the first time the circuit was shut down. The system is designed to send a test charge down the line after several seconds to see if the line is clear to re-start. That accounts for the second blaze.
Your shenanigans is invalid.
Reply

Nathan Obbards
10/08/09

@Lego Addict: Young man, you can't just go declaring Shenanigans on innocent people! That's how wars get started!
Reply

GitEmSteveDave_IsGWaving promoted this comment Nathan Obbards was starred Nathan Obbards was unstarred

GitEmSteveDave_Isn'tFreshPerked
10/08/09

@Homerjay is utterly alone.: Ahhh, someone else who knows that if the power doesn't come back on after 15 seconds it's probably going to be out for a while as it didn't clear the foul.
Reply

Lego Addict
10/09/09

@Homerjay is utterly alone.: the tree would not just stop being on fire though... which the video clearly shows. I must stand firm on my declaration of shenanigans.
Reply

Lego Addict was starred Lego Addict was unstarred

PurpleMonkeyDishwasher:
10/08/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
They happened to be there with a video camera when this happened?
Reply

Homerjay is utterly alone. promoted this comment

Homerjay is utterly alone.
10/08/09

@PurpleMonkeyDishwasher: : You may be on to something. I'll bet they erected a 50' wide fan just out of frame to blow the tree into the power lines. That clearly makes more sense.
Reply

Margatron
10/08/09

In reply to Tree Electrocutes Itself on Power Lines, Goes Down in a Ball of Fire
You can HEAR the electricity! Call the fire department, doofus!
Reply

Margatron was starred Margatron was unstarred

Homerjay is utterly alone.
10/08/09

@Margatron: Why?? That would end the awesomeness!
Reply

Margatron
10/08/09

@Homerjay is utterly alone.: Well, you have a point. But I'd be freaking out if that was my house right there.

So sad, the tree must've been jealous of the phone pole.
Reply

Margatron was starred Margatron was unstarred

Earlier discussions Other discussions Show all discussions Show featured discussions only Start a new discussion