Maine is still recovering from a windstorm that hit a few days ago. As happens with every storm here, all news reports about it go out of their way to mention that you should never touch downed power lines.
The power company also buys a lot of ads that have the same message.
How many people actually deliberately mess with them? From how much we keeping here the same message over and over, you’d think there was a huge epidemic of people getting electrocuted messing with power lines. However, i can’t remember ever hearing anything like that happening unless lines came down right on top of someone or their car.
According to one website:
I know personally of a case where a car hit a power pole. In shock and injured, the teen driver tried to lift the live line off the car. His father arrived on the scene and tried to get the boy away from the line. Horrible.
And then there’s this.
It takes one unthinking moment…
Then it appears that the messages are working.
I guess dogs and other animals might touch them unwittingly; so if you control animals or children you need to make sure they keep off.
Outside workers might try to shift them for various reasons, but it seems unlikely.
First page of Google, 2017 results only:
Downed power line results in family tragedy - Safe Electricity.org
Boys electrocuted by power line suffered ‘agonizing deaths’ - NY Daily …
Hurricane Irma: Man electrocuted by downed power line in Winter Park
$9,000,000 Settlement for Wrongful Death of 24 year old Electrocuted …
Injury From Downed Electrical Wires | New Haven, CT Lawyers
Beloved retired Baton Rouge dentist electrocuted by downed power …
It’s hard to find statistics in the US since they get lumped in with similar injuries and deaths like folks digging who accidentally contact a buried line, or someone who is working on a gutter and accidentally contacts the overhead lines coming into the house. Electricity injures tens of thousands and kills a few hundred people every year. Most of those deaths occur on the job though and aren’t a result of touching a downed line. My best guess is that there are a handful of deaths each year from downed power lines, but I can’t find any hard statistics to back that up.
There are two main types of power lines, transmission lines and distribution lines.
Transmission lines run at very high voltages , typically 50,000 to 500,000 volts and higher. They carry power from one area to another, like from a generating plant to a city. These wires are almost never insulated. The really big towers with three big sets of wires are transmission lines. Transmission lines are almost never underground, though there are exceptions like transmission lines that run through major cities, or lines that run under water.
Transmission lines tend to end at substations, and from there, distribution lines distribute the power out to the individual neighborhoods. Distribution lines are lower in voltage than transmission lines, typically running at voltages somewhere in the range of 3,000 volts or so on older systems up to 15,000 to 20,000 volts or so on newer systems. Distribution lines are sometimes insulated, but often not. In some areas the distribution lines are underground.
Transformers on distribution lines drop the voltage down to the 240 split phase power that comes into your house. Each transformer will typically feed three or four houses. The wire from the transformer to your house is usually insulated.
If a line falls, you may see a bunch of sparks, and then the power may go out. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE LINES ARE SAFE TO TOUCH! Power lines tend to have what are called automatic reclosers on them. Power lines have breakers of sorts on them, which function similarly to the breakers in your home. If there’s a fault, the breaker trips and shuts the line off. It’s not that big of a deal for you to go down into your basement or wherever your breaker box is located and turn the breaker back on, but if you are on a power system, you may need to drive for a dozen miles or so to get to that breaker. Since power lines often trip due to temporary faults like tree limbs blowing into lines during storms, they use an automatic recloser to automatically turn the line back on after a fault. Think of it like having an automatic guy standing next to your breaker box, and if the breaker trips, he automatically turns it back on without you needing to do anything. That’s how a recloser works.
Reclosers are programmable, but the way they are typically set is to try a couple of times fairly quickly (within a few seconds), and if that doesn’t work, they wait a bit longer, like maybe a minute or two, and then they try one last time to turn the power line back on. If that last attempt fails, they give up and then some power company worker gets to drive out and fix the problem.
If your power has ever gone out during a storm and then come back on a couple of seconds later, that was an automatic recloser doing its job. Lightning or a tree branch or wind cause an electrical fault, and the power went out, and then the recloser turn the line back on, and all was well.
What this means for downed lines is that you see a bunch of sparks, then the power goes out. Now you think the line is dead so you walk over to take a closer look. A couple of minutes passes, and you are standing right next to a downed 15,000 volt line. The recloser turns back on, and the momentary surge of electricity has enough current in it to kill you.
So, not only should you not touch downed lines, you need to stay the hell away from them. Seriously. If it’s a 15,000 volt line, that voltage will spread out over the ground if the line turns back on. Right at the line you’ll have 15,000 volts. A couple feet away you’ll have something like 5,000 volts. 10 or 15 feet away, the voltage will finally drop down to almost nothing. With these voltage gradients, you can easily end up standing in such a way that you have a few hundred or maybe even a couple thousand volts potential difference between your two feet, which is more than enough to get a fatal current flowing up through your body.
You’re asking the wrong question. It’s extremely rare for people to deliberately “mess with” power lines. Rather, as the other responses point out, people are in an emergency situation, and don’t think, or else they simply don’t realize the danger in the first place.
A number of people aren’t going to see them because they are hidden in the grass or it is dark out.
If I can’t see it, telling me to stay away from it isn’t going to help.
The information that most lines are not insulated and about the reclosures is good stuff - I wouldn’t mess with a downed line, but can see where someone might think they could safely move one off of their street or driveway.
This is basically what happened to an ex-cow-orker.
There were no witnesses, but all the evidence pointed to the same story. One night, he was driving in a relatively unfamiliar area, missed a curve, and hit a power pole. He got out of the car, and contacted the power line with his head.
He wasn’t an idiot, and I believe that if he has known the power lines were dangling in the area that he would have taken care to avoid them.
Somebody here posted a scary story in a similar thread a few years ago of an underground power line that malfunctioned. As I loosely recall the story he was walking to his mailbox (or something) in deep snow when he felt a slight but growing tingling sensation. A couple steps later it was stronger.
He was paying attention and quickly retreated. Just a couple steps farther, or if he’d tripped and fallen he’d have been dealing with lethally electrified snow laying on the ground. :eek:
Years ago, while I was going through first responder training, our instructor included details on this incident that involved a police officer investigating a traffic accident. The message was that even people who have been trained can make mistakes, so be careful. It made an impression.
It is if it raises your awareness about the danger.
Excellent post, lots of good info.
Are you, by chance, a lineman for the county?
mmm
No, I’m not a lineman. I’m an electrical engineer / software engineer working for a company that makes industrial controls. Also, one of my former jobs was in a power plant.
In case you missed the reference: WITCHITA LINEMAN , GLEN CAMPBELL , 1968 VINYL LP - YouTube 
Now GusNSpot actually was a lineman for the county. Sorta. He used to fly power line patrol.
A power line pulled out of it’s support on the ancient wooden pole at work, hit the transformer, making a truly impressive bang, an d got blown in half. When the fire guys arrived, I pointed out the end which was just dangling from other power pole, and made them put up caution tape around it.
Based upon my experience in handling 911 calls reporting downed lines I’d estimate in 50% of incidents someone tries to move a downed wire before personnel from the power company arrive to deal with the situation. The general public does not know which wire is which on the pole and cannot safely and accurately distinguish a telephone or cable tv wire from an electrical line.
Protocol is to notify the power company, and send police and/or fire to keep people back until the electric lineman arrives. And, of course, the police and/or firefighters often try to move the damn downed wire before any confirmation that it is safe to do so. :smack:
No, lifting a downed wire with a wooden handled home tool is not the safe way to move it. There is more than enough water in that wooden mop handle to form a conductive pathway. True linemen’s tools are specially constructed to deal with live lines safely.
The only reason more people do not get seriously hurt is that low voltage telephone or cable tv lines tend to be strung lowest on the pole and are much more likely to get pulled down than power lines.
Well, sorta is correct. 
But one look at me and you’ll know the song was not about me.
(oh, that’s what that big whooshing sound was)
I have never heard that before, and completely missed the reference.