Near Misses!

When I was a contractor the first thing every Monday brought up in the safety meeting was near misses! Without hesitation one of the guys after the shop steward asked if there were any would pipe up and give theirs! I had a few! No one got ridiculed (unless you were an ape and did somethin like drop an outrigger pad on your foot or somethin? ) and guys would discuss how it could be done safer! Here at the co. you'll get disciplined passably because of what ya did! To me this is part of the reason we see more and more accidents cuz some of us wanna be the greatest Lineman ever and are to embarrassed to admit wrong doing! It's time to buck up and admit we're all human and admit some brain farts so the rest of the trade can learn form them!

Here's one that wasn't a close call but was more of a dumb way to do somethin....I had to change three 200 amp bypasses once at an OCR location! This location was obviously added to this 40' stick after the pole was ever thought of judgin by the fact the doors damn near reached the top of the OCRS! It was tight to say the least! Anyway I turned down help to change'em and y phase was tight as x phase OCR leads were about a foot below the load side y phase jumper! Instead of wastin time doing it a safer I had thought of, I managed to save time by growin a third arm and get it done but before the bucket was cradled I was already kickin my self for doin it the "faster" way! Could've had a big issue with just one wrong movement rubber or not but I didn't luckily! Doesn't mean I should do it that way again either just cuz it worked this time! The point of this is my help made a good point of at least there wasn't an apprentice on the crew to see it!

So can any of you think of a better way to do it? What are a few of your brain farts?

This was a jacked up deal. Electrician went ahead and made up their leads in a three phase meter base. My job was to install the other end in a secondary buss cabinet hot being fed by a 500 kva 120/208. I put as much rubber as I possibly could on the buss bars, started feeding the wires into the cabinet. Had a problem getting the neutral into the TLS lug. Figured hey I'll just pull this neutral back out and run to the truck and use a HY lug and I can manipulate it better in my rubber gloves anyways.

Started to feed it back down the cabinet lost control of the wire it went phase to ground and I went horizontal on my back getting out of there. I ran back to my truck to get a shot gun to dump the 500 by the time I got back it went out.

What I wasn't thinking is the leads we're made up in the meter base; THAT NEUTRAL was connected; I didn't tape it up - I didn't think about it.

Like I said I rubbered the buss as best as I could but when you already have 8 other runs coming off it it you can't get everything. However if I would of tapped that end up when going down I know I could of avoided the whole thing.

For now I just learned in a cabinet like that - I'll get a clearance not worth it for the available fault current and such. It ain't worth it.

I have heard of folks cradling the bucket and when they get into the cab the brakes where never set……