Staying Alive on the Job

Lockout and tagout

Shut the source, lock the disconnect with your own lock, tag it with your name, and test the circuit dead with a meter you have proven works. Your lock, your key, in your pocket.

The reason it is personal is simple. A breaker somebody else turned off can be turned back on by somebody else. A lock with your name on it can only come off by you.

Arc flash

A short inside gear releases enormous energy as heat, light and pressure in a fraction of a second. It is not shock, it is an explosion, and it burns skin and ignites ordinary clothing at a distance.

That is why rated clothing, face protection and gloves are specified for work on energized gear, and why the boundary around equipment is marked. Synthetic street clothes under an arc are worse than nothing because they melt.

The things that actually hurt people

Falls from ladders and lifts. Cuts and eye injuries from drilling and cutting overhead. Back injuries from carrying pipe and pulling wire badly. Heat in an attic in an inland summer, which is a serious risk in this county from May through October.

Electricity gets the attention and the rest of the list fills more emergency rooms. Set the ladder at the right angle, tie it off, wear the glasses, drink water, and ask for a hand with the heavy end.

The culture problem

The dangerous moment is usually social. The schedule is behind, the tenant will not let you kill power, it is one wire and it will take a second. That is how experienced electricians get hurt, not apprentices.

You are allowed to say no. Any employer worth working for backs that up, and the ones who do not are telling you what the next ten years there will be like.