A Day With A Lineman #36 ~ Snow, A Fallen Tree and A Slingshot

The Sandman just knocked me out and I was sleeping hard. I was hearing this weird noise in my sleep and nobody would shut it off. Oh… it’s my phone and that means it’s time to go to work and make some $$. The outage was up in the mountain section of our electrical service territory. I better bundle up, this could end up being a very long night.

The Lineman on call was on his way from Burbank, so he has a bit of a drive. I swung into the shop and grabbed the side by side equipped with tracks. We never know exactly what we are getting into but it’s better to be prepared for anything.

At my house there was a light sprinkle of rain coming down. Then by the time I left the shop and started patrolling the line it was snowing like crazy. I could barely see the top of the poles using my spot light. It was like I was going through hyperspace but I was only going 15-20 MPH. My eyes straining to see the structures and wire causing me to go somewhat crosseyed. This sucks!!! I can’t see shit out here!!!

The timing worked out perfect. After I patrolled a lower section of line and made my way to the downstream Recloser (circuit breaker). I needed to verify it was closed so we know the problem is upstream from that. Just as I called the other Lineman to get him the info on what I found he found the issue… A tree of course.

In order for us to work on it safely we needed to de-energize both phases. One side was de-energized already but the other side wasn’t. The de-energized side goes up the mountains one way and the other stays down in the canyon and goes up to some lower elevation stuff. As I pulled up the other Lineman was opening the line. He created what we call a Blue Dragon. There was about a 4 foot arc that happened when he went to de-energize the one side. WOW He underestimated how much load or amps of current was on that section. That will wake a Lineman up that’s for sure. LOL

Instead of having 105 customers out of power, we ended up with over 200. Sometimes we have to intentionally de-energize a section of line so we can work on it safely. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

With the line de-energized and protective grounds installed we got to work clearing this tree off the line. The neutral wire was broke but one of the phases was pinned down by the tree.

Slingshot… Engaged

The wire size is 1/0 ACSR. Aluminum Conductor Steel Reinforced. It’s about the diameter of your pinky finger with a steel core in the middle. It takes a lot to break this stuff. Also a lot of weight to pin it down to a few feet off the ground. This is where things tend to get a little sketchy!!

After cleaning up a bunch of smaller limbs we got to the point where the next cut was probably gonna cause some serious chaos. We could pull the wire down but there was still a lot of weight from the tree on it. How much??? We have no idea one could only guess.

Unable to get a truck into our location we used a long rope to pull down and hold as much as possible. The wire was like the rubber bands of a sling shot. I barely cut into the bottom side of the branch and HOLY SHIT!!! All hell broke loose!! The branch broke, sending the wire slingshotting into the air!! The tree flipped off the line and did a 360 spin and crumbled onto the ground, breaking it the rest of the way off the stump. The Lineman holding the rope couldn’t do much other than just let the rope slide under his foot and through his hands. His hands did get a little hot. Lol.

Once I heard the tree starting to crack I took a few quick steps out of the danger zone. Always have an escape plan!! This happened so fast that if a person was in the wrong place something very very bad could have happened. We call it Staying out of the bite

Now that the wire is free from under the tree and both of us are still alive, we needed to get the neutral wire out back together and up to proper tension. I flew up in my bucket and got all my rigging setup while CHEEZE-IT got the wire together on the ground. Yes that is his nickname, CHEEZE-IT, CHEEZER, The CHEEZE… trust me there is a reason behind it but I’m not going to go into it.

Using a hand-line he pulled the wire up to me and I caught the wire off with my hoist and a wire grip. A hand-line is basically a long section of rope with a pulley on it that we hang on the pole where we are working. This is how we get tools and material up to the guy working. In this case we used it to pull the wire up as far as we can before getting caught to the end of a hoist. Then the hoist is used to tighten the span of wire to the proper sag or tension.

Once the neutral wire was back up and reconnected, we drove a few spans up the road to re-energize one section of the line. It was the one that we had to de-energize to make it safe for us to work. The other line was de-energized at a recloser 5 miles or so away.

Remove the protective grounds, install the source side jumpers, and close in the cut outs. Then drive over to the recloser and energize the rest of the customers. Then we can call it a night.

Despite a couple of Oh Shit!! moments, we got everyone’s power back on in 3 hours. That’s from the time I get called at my house until the time we closed in the recloser. Sometimes outages like this can take us all night to find and fix. We were lucky that this was just off the road and the neutral was broke at the pole on the side of the road. Being accessible by bucket made the repairs a piece of cake…

Thanks for stopping by and checking out another edition of A Day With A Lineman. Things get a little wild at times but it’s all part of the job. Electricity isn’t the only hazard we deal with… as you can see. We are just Lineman doing what we can to keep the lights on for our customers.

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