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Attorneys for a woman killed by a falling Allegheny Power distribution line say that improper procedure taught to linemen by the company was the cause of the failure of a line that killed a Pennsylvania woman.  Now the attorney has asked the Pennsylvania Utilities Commission to open an investigation with an eye toward correcting other improperly spliced lines before they also fail and possibly kill someone else.  Read an article with a link to the letter sent to the PUC here. 

If you're a more visual person, here's a news video story, but there's no link to the letter.

Bet you don't walk around outside anymore without looking over your head for former Allegheny Power lines, now the legal responsibility of FirstEnergy.  Of course, FirstEnergy didn't have any comment.  Todd was probably doing some primal screaming underneath his desk and couldn't come to the phone.
 


Comments

bh link
01/18/2012 6:06am

As the article states, it is sometimes difficult to draw direct connections between bad training and what actually happens when power lines fall.

However, I live in Allegheny's service area, now owned by FirstEnergy. In the December 2009 blackout that hit WV's distribution system, large numbers of line failures happened in my immediate area that were not connected in any way with tree damage. Lines just broke and fell under what was really a relatively moderate amount of snow in our area. Many of these breaks occurred in the many joints and patches from previous line breaks.

Could the sloppy training and failure to properly clean conductors during splicing contributed to these failures? In light of the current case, I think that possibility is worth serious consideration.

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Da Hillbilly
01/19/2012 7:22am

It just gets worse and worse when your part of a lying cheating scam. One lie/shortcut/scam leads to another and another and another until you're left with nothin!

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Keryn
01/19/2012 2:25pm

Although PATH seems to have trouble determining on which side of the line their promotional expenditures fall, I would like to think that we all know that only "above the line" comments last here. Keep it (relatively) clean or keep it to email.

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Pam
01/19/2012 4:51pm

Back the end of October, we had a similar situation as BH. We were without power almost 54 hours. Yes, there was a heavy, wet snow, but the area where our line broke was not near a tree,no limb fell on it, in fact, there wasn't even that much snow on the lines. We were told there was a tear in the line.

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Pam
01/19/2012 4:58pm

I'm sure you all caught the article on the front page of today's Journal with regard to utility costs. Notice that the electric was the only one that really went up. So the people who were paying less for gas lost that savings to higher electric rates.

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