Cable strikes!

[Python]

Just curious to see who's hit what over the years? Some times they just seem to pop out of thin air! The worst and most recent of mine was levelling a pretty straight forward pensilvanica stem ready to be ground out and hit a street lighting spur 12" above soil level in the centre of the stump with my 660.

 

Flash...bang... new pants!

[Gray git]

Wasn't an accident but cut a btline to a derelict house that we were told was out of use and ment we could fell instead of dismantling, wrong, it was the alarm line and had blue lights on site within 10 min:D

Hit some Christmas light cable last week with the grinder and stood and watched as about 100 bulbs and wire got pulled to destruction around the head.

[jose]

Was digging around a stump just the other day, ithad grown through the fence so that came out so we could grind. Had a dig around to remove excess stones etc and for some reason i thought i would just go a little more. Came accross a 3-4inch power cable!

Reckon i would have learnt to fly had i got that!

the water works company had not layed it on their land as it meant digging up tarmac so the just ran it right up the fence line !

 

 

did a small stump yesterday and the virgin meadia cable i swear was like a spagettie string the way it snaked all over the lawn. lucky they layed it so shallow (1-2inches) an gentle tug pulled it out so i could tell where it was. Then i reburied it afterwards.

[adbat234]

Hit an old semaphore signal steel cable on the railways on a night shift. Resulted in the signals becoming inoperable until repaired. Could have been an expensive fine for the firm I was working for if it had delayed the trains. Luckily we were on a track closure and there was plenty of time to get the repair bods on site. Hard to spot at night under poor lighting amongst the brambles when I was doing my tazmanian devil thing!

[Gareth Dalzell]

We had a guy who was hand digging while planting a hedge because we knew there was a cable where we were planting. He came across something crossing the planting trench that he mis-identified as a 40mm tree root (don't say anything - I know!) . Couldn't cut through it was the spade so cut through it with a set of loppers - big mistake!

Melted the blades and sent a massive flash flame up his front, burning all his facial and front of of head hair and blackening his skin. I heard the noise, it sounded like a compressor hose bursting. It was a 3 phase cable. The loppers were insulated as were his boots and his gloves - a very lucky guy.

[Bearded Munch]

A few years ago I was drilling holes with an Auger on the back of a tractor to put some wood bollards in, and as I pulled the Auger up on the second hole I had a river follow it, I soon found I had gone through a main water pipe feeding a Leisure centre, one very annoyed chef and a few people showering were not impressed.

[Graham]

High pressure gas pulled up with a Becker. The sound of escaping gas was phenomenal and an 11kv line shorted out to a jam factory:001_smile: Oops.

 

Electricity went out on a Friday afternoon and the gas on a Saturday morning. In both instances the turnout for repairs was huge. All that overtime.

Edited August 16, 2013 by Graham

[d-raittuk]

we do a lot of work for some village trusts and constantly hitting scaffold poles embedded in the stumps and trees which is a right laff !:thumbup:

 

When i was a young groundworker i was digging a trench for an extension on the front of a house with a machine and the top blokes from the electric board had been lazy and lay the electric cable in the flower bed along the drive massive bang puff of smoke and an naughty score in the bucket.

[Triassic]

Was once working with a tarmac planning machine taking the wearing coat off the top of a concrete road section and some numpty had put the lighting cable in the expansion joint rather than dig a trench across the concrete road section. Big bang when we hit it!!

[Breezeblock]

main gas pipe buried 6 inches under the ground with a 55t liebherr demolition excavator taking it off the back of a low loader in the main road going into falkirk on easter friday at 3pm when everybody was trying to get home:thumbup: