electrocution of apprentice in Oldham

[--tom]

Earlier this year in, Oldham, an electrical apprentice was electrocuted in the CU area . At issue was the service fuse, apparently an old type that had a split design so that one could pull the fuse but leave the system still live.
Anyhow, thats how i understood the newspaper report.
Does anyone have any comments or a pic of such a fuse arrangement?

 

[plugwash]

could be he had both the live and neutral fused and only pulled the fuse on the neutral

 

[andy]

did he die?

 

[swelec]

electrocute [Show phonetics]
verb [T often passive]
to kill someone by causing electricity to flow through their body:
He was electrocuted when he touched the bare wires.

electrocution [Show phonetics]
noun [C or U]

(from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary


)electric shock noun [C]
a sudden, painful feeling that you get when electricity flows through your body


(from Cambridge Learner's Dictionary)


there is a subtle difference

 

[Stoday]

Or not, depending on your dictionary:

electrocute [i léktr? kyoot] (3rd person present singular electrocutes, present participle electrocuting, past electrocuted, past participle electrocuted) transitive verb

injure or kill with electric shock: to cause injury or death with an electric shock

Encarta® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

 

[TexMex]

Thank god I read encarta. That'll be why I'm still alive after being electrocuted many times.

Anyhow Tom, we still want to know, did he die?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Encarta® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Are you seriously going to trust Microsoft to tell you what words mean?

 

[--tom]

Plugwash, that was my thinking. But following a pic some weeks ago, showing a kind of fuse with only the live actually fused i wondered how the CU could still be live with the fuse pulled?
Are you saying that there is in fact a type of split-head double fuse? Where could i see one?

Unfortunately, he did die and the information came from a coroners report in the newspaper.

 

[kendor]

Was the apprentice working unsupervised??!!

 

[--tom]

No, he was supervised by a tradesman in the next room who "heard a noise" and then went to investigate.

 

[kendor]

1) he was unsupervised as the tradesman (electrician?) was in the room next door
2) He shouldn't have been working on live gear anyway, in other words the circuit should have been tested beforehand to make sure it was dead.

I would say if the tradesman was a sparks then he was for the high jump on this one!