Climber apparently electrocuted scaling 200-foot tower

By Hum
in Real World News

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Grand Master

Hum

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SEATTLE ? A man was apparently electrocuted when he climbed a 200-foot tower, touched a high-voltage power line and fell to a platform where his body was recovered by a Seattle Fire Department team.

Firefighters found a cap and a cellphone next to the body but nothing to indicate why he climbed the tower early Friday, said department spokesman Kyle Moore.

There was no one at the scene who said they knew the man, Moore said. The King County medical examiner's office took the body to determine his identification and cause of death.

"We don't know why he climbed the tower," said police spokesman Renee Witt. "There's nothing to indicate it was something other than an accidental death from trespassing."

The fire department initially received a report about 12:30 a.m. Friday of what appeared to be a transformer fire on the tower that carries 120,000-volt lines across the Lake Washington Ship Canal in the Fremont neighborhood.

It was followed by a report of witnesses seeing a flash of crackling sparks and a man falling.

Seattle City Light said it was too dangerous for firefighters to rush up the tower, Moore said. They were able to call in a Snohomish County helicopter for assistance. It spotted the body on the platform with no signs of life.

City Light turned off the power through the lines so a fire department technical rescue team could climb up and recover the body from the platform about 150 feet off the ground. The body was lowered to the ground before 7 a.m. in a basket.

The utility was able to switch electricity so only one customer was out of service during the recovery, said spokesman Peter Clarke.

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Grand Master

The Evil Overlord

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Pork......

Technically he didnt touch the cable as the voltage would have jumped the gap before he even got near it.

Some nice vids here of arcing http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm#Disconnect

I couldn't get the link to work, was it the video of the pylon repair team that go up in a helicopter? they get some really good arcs when not concentrating

(the repair guy wears a chainmail suit to let the electricity flow around him)

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Grand Master

Atomic Wanderer Chicken

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This is what happens when you climb a electrical pole, its not very smart at all

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Veteran

abecedarian paradoxious

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I might suggest "Darwin Award" but this is Seattle.

Anyhow, as metals are stolen from private sites, such are replaced with imprinted metals.

As metals are stolen from increasing elevations, such are replaced with imprinted metals.

It's inevitable that one idiot will stretch a little too far and arc.

As I said, this is Seattle... and sadly it's the same everywhere.

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