CATV guy got one hell of a rap

Had a call last week from the cable company reporting a problem at one of their nods.
Other customers were on this Transformer that fed the CATV box, and no one was reporting any problems with their power .

When I got there I talked to the cable guy. the cable that went from their equipment to the cable line was burnt almost open. The worker disconected the cable and got what he described was one hell of a bite.

I Pulled the meter ( it was a 120 volt meter) in one of those really old round meter channels. The Nuetrals connect together in the center of the channel with a screw clamp. The connection was rotted away and they had completly lost their nuetral.

when he went up to disconnect his cable he was picking up the nuetral on the service through the cable messanger and his body

Thank God he didn't get hurt. these guys work in leather gloves, or sometimes bare hands. Maybe he thought a lightning strike or something melted the cable?

Anyway we scrounged up some parts and got the service squared away. even the electric meter was screwed up... It was reading error.

Yeah them folks get purdy close to energized equipment. It was about a year ago I went on a call in Odessa where a cable guy got a pretty good burn; he was gone before I got there. He was attaching a service drop to a customer owned meter pole that was just that--customer owned junk. Customer put a guard light on it and it wasn't up to snuff and the cable guy ended up going phase to ground with some poor connections.

He wasn't seriously injured but enough to take a couple days off work.

As for 2 wire meter bases I never really got to jack with a whole lot of them; wasn't until last few months until I had found that the neutral must be connected in 2 parts for it to function correctly.

T/C was lights out; check voltage 120; customer puts load on and nothin...come to be the bottom side of the meter base lost its reference to ground.