During storm season, downed power lines can be deadly. Oklahoma Association of Electric Cooperatives (OAEC) regularly educates line workers, first responders and the public on how to stay safe around electricity year-round.
OAEC is a statewide association that has been in existence for approximately 90 years. The 30 local electric co-ops of the OAEC serve primarily rural communities, bringing power to more than one million people across all 77 counties in Oklahoma.
OAEC hosts approximately 25 statewide safety conferences and schools each year, as well as around 300 local safety meetings across its Oklahoma co-ops. The lineman training facility onsite at its Oklahoma City headquarters offers safety education for apprenticed line workers and advanced training to certified journeymen.
Wade Hurst is a second-generation lineman and an OAEC senior safety and loss instructor. He trains line workers from across the state in different weather conditions, day and night.
“We can show them what to do, what not to do, what's safe, what's not safe,” Hurst said. “Even though we do a lot of training up here, a lot of their training also takes place back at the co-op, underneath their journeyman linemen and their construction foremen that are already trained in the business.”
Hot dog on a hot line
Daniel Lofland, in hard hat, jeans and workboots, stands in front of a long-bed trailer supporting a mini-mockup of high-voltage power lines. A group of 22 similarly dressed apprentice and journeyman line workers gather round.
Lofland has worked at Oklahoma Electric Cooperative for 17 years, nine as a lineman. He demonstrates the deadly effects of electrical power lines.
His co-worker, Tony Ramirez, wears heavy, 30,000-volt-resistant rubber gloves and sleeves that reach up to his shoulders. He skewers a hot dog on a metal spike on the end of a long fiberglass pole.
“That hot dog is about 60% water like we are,” Lofland says, but one-twentieth the size of a human body.
Ramirez touches the hot dog to the ungrounded power line demonstrator. Flames shoot up from the wire. The hot dog has small chunks missing at one end.
“The hot dog looks a little different,” Lofland says. “But it's not massively different. If we were to scale this up to, like, our size, what do you think that equates to?”
The small missing chunks represent the size of a person’s arm, he says. Then he turns the hot dog over to the other end.
“Can you see the black hole at the bottom?” he says. “It burned the inside. So it's going to hit all those organs from, say, this hand to this foot. We can't live without the heart and the lungs. The physical damage we can repair, we can't really do much for that internal damage.”
“Our job is very safe. As long as we touch one thing,” Lofland said. “The minute we touch two things, we give electricity a path.”
Grant Rogers is a former Marine and journeyman lineman with Rural Electric Co-op based in Lindsay, 50 miles south of Oklahoma City. He completed OAEC’s Essentials Skills School. The training includes pole climbing, simulated live power line training, work zone safety and other safety measures. He also received an Occupational Safety and Health Administration certification.
Rogers says he values the wisdom of the older trainers who pass down their knowledge to a new generation of line workers. The camaraderie and getting to know linemen from other parts of the state come in handy when they get calls to help in other areas.
“All the different groups that went to different countries to help supply electricity to different places come through right here,” Hurst, the trainer, said.
"You want a journeyman lineman to show up at your place, because that's going to be somebody that's skilled and knows everything that they need to know to be able to get your power back on," he said.
Ways to stay safe
When digging, always contact the company to locate underground lines.
That fiberglass-handled shovel probably won’t offer much protection because it hasn’t been tested. Even if a sticker on it says it has, the dirt and oil on the handle can still conduct electricity.
Always assume any power line, below or above ground, is live. Even if you think it’s not. Lofland tells a number of stories of people who literally crossed the line.
If a power line comes in contact with your vehicle, stay inside because your tires will protect you.
“Rubber is an insulator,” says Lofland.
However, most tires are embedded with steel belts, so electricity will make them smoke. A lot.
“Eventually, those tires are going to pop,” he says. “It's still going to land on that flat tire. You're still better to stay in that car.”
Unless the vehicle catches fire. Then he says, “Get the heck out. Jump as far as you can with two feet.”
Yep, land on both feet at the same time and bunny-hop for two minutes…about 200 feet … to safety where the electricity has dissipated. But on both feet.
“When you step and land with different legs and different points, the difference in voltage on that ground from this leg to this leg is going to pass through you like the hot dog,” says Lofland.
Then he adds, “Also crucial, don't touch any other part of the car when you do it.”
Editor's note: Oklahoma Association of Electric Cooperatives is a financial supporter of KOSU, but we cover them just as we do any newsmaker.
