Electrical safety...stories that are funny now, but weren't so funny then...

We are having a bit of a "training opportunity" here in Pearl, after an electrical safety "problem" recently. And the training I went to brought up a funny (now...since it's after the fact and no one was seriously hurt) story.

Underway on mighty TUCSON several years ago, I was catching a flick late one evening in the crew's mess (rare, for a nuke, getting a movie in). Being on the 18-24 watch, the forward end of the boat was darkened, as was the crew's mess (for the movie).

Now you know that an electrician's job never ends (thankfully I'm an RC Div type), so in the middle of the movie EM2 John Doe (name changed to protect the guilty) came in, eliciting grumbles as he stepped over/around/on several of his shipmates to get to a P-panel in the aft port side (yes, all the way in the furthest reaches) of crew's mess. He needed to hang danger tags on a set of fuses in the panel, for some such piece of gear (an aux drain pump, precipitator, something minor like that).

Now, the smart thing would have been to pause the flick, turn on the lights, and let him do his business...so of course we didn't do that, did we? No...left the lights out, bitched and moaned about him interrupting the movie, typical sailor stuff. EM2 was reduced to holding a pocket flashlight in his teeth as he opened the P-panel and grabbed the first fuse (with fuse pullers, thankfully). Now we all know that P-panels are supposed to be secured (and themselves danger tagged) before opening them to pull fuses...so of course Mr. Murphy and that damn law of his had this one energized.

The load he was pulling the fuse for was apparently under load, too, as (bad) luck would have it...because when he pulled that first fuse a blue arc lit up the back end of crew's mess. EM2 stood on the bench he was on, holding the fuse pullers and fuse, frozen with a look of utter terror on his face (well deserved, too).

The movie was stopped this time, and the panel closed (and secured, before any damage could be done to the load in question from running on only 2 of it's 3 phases). The critique, I'm told, was rather brutal, and a lot of people were not writing/hanging tags for a while (nor doing maintenance).

In summary: Fuse pullers-$5...tagout sheet and tags-$1.50...the look on EM2's face when he realized he was lucky to be alive-Priceless.

posted by Robert Schumacher @ 4:29 PM