Tales from the paper mill: Someone told me this story, I never saw this. Cats whisker. In large switchgear to prevent arcing on contact surfaces, very often there will be a cat whisker. It's a small sacrificial stiff wire that makes first and breaks last. That way if there's an arc when shutting off a circuit, the main contacts are far enough apart that they won't arc when hte whisker finally pulls out. Did you ever see switches that say "Do not disconnect under load"? If there's a load on them when you close the switch (ie turn it on), the whisker may arc and weld itself to the contacts.

So... an E&I guy shut off a disconnector but the cat whisker hadn't disconnected because it was welded to the contacts. He locked out and the handle was absolutely in the OFF position. He was killed when he touched a 2400v bus bar that was still hot. Always check with a hotstick before you work on stuff.

Water expands about 1700x when it turns to steam and we ran the 1700's and 1800's on steam... when metal vaporizes it expands about 67,000x . That's why arc flash is so deadly.

Again, like yesterday.... locked out does not mean zero energy.

"6 And the Lord God prepared a [a]plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah [b]was very grateful for the plant."

The group chat be like...

Current World Cup situation ⚽ 😭

11’8” bridge I’m looking at you.

Attacked by swordfish 700’ down.

Tales from the papermill: In the late 90's at IP Savannah they had a shared stock system that ran between PM4,5,6. The piping ran over the head boxes (who knows why??). The pipe rusted thru one day and blew out a hole the size of my thigh. Stock and water rained down on the fourdrinnier table of PM5. If that wasn't bad enough, the headbox control system was in a 6" square wire trough that ran the width of the machine. The lid for it had previously had a roll dropped on it so it never closed correctly. That flood of water filled the trough up with stock and water. So all my guys on site are on the cat walk over the table mucking out this trough to repair the headbox control circuitboards. Meanwhile one of my guys was off to the side sitting in the bottom of a cabinet with his legs crossed indian style as he worked. Someone on PM4 turned on the transfer pump because it hadn't been locked out and flooded us all over again... except now the trough was open. We all got soaked and especially the guy sitting in that cabinet... his legs had gone to sleep and he couldn't stand up so he just had to sit there and take the deluge.

1)keep your shit in order. It would not have been so troublesome if the trough doors had not been damanged and sealed properly.
2)isolate all sources of energy when you lock out equipment.