Damien's plea to all electricians: Never work "live"

25-year-old A grade electrician Damien is living proof - but only just - of the terrible consequences that can be suffered when a switchboard explodes because something goes wrong while working “live”.

It took the “slip of a screwdriver” and just two seconds for Damien to suffer dreadful injuries in an incident which happened just before last Christmas.
He admits he’s “pretty lucky” as he could so easily have been killed.

Mainly because he’s a young man his injuries are healing well – better than expected in fact – but he says he’s been through hell and back and the recovery process will take many months and possibly years.

“What I have been through has been just dreadful.”

Damien’s plea to all other electricians is quite simple: “Never work live, it’s just not worth it. Most would not be aware of the repercussions of what can happen.

“Fortunately my mates who are electricians have told me they will never do it because of what they have seen me go through,” he told Energy Safe Victoria (ESV).

“It’s worrying when ambulance paramedics tell me they see more electrically related burns than any other.”

Damien received burns to his hands, arms, legs and abdomen during the incident.

Damien in hospital recovering

The incident and recovery has involved among other things, the following:

• Being placed in an induced coma for three days
• Being heavily sedated and almost suffering a heart attack
• Suffering severe hallucinations
• Spending four weeks in the Victorian Adult Burns Service at the Alfred hospital, before undergoing six weeks of rehabilitation at the Epworth Hospital
• Suffering excruciating pain each day early on in recovery when the bandages on his arms were being changed
• Use of skin grafts from his legs to help repair his arms – with the result that two areas of the body now need healing
• Causing distress for his girlfriend, family and work colleagues
• Being unable to go out in the sun without being covered up for the foreseeable future
• Losing muscle strength after being in bed for such a long time. He needed a walking frame to walk 20 metres and effectively had to learn to walk again
• Barely having enough strength to tighten the screw of a power point
• Possibly needing another operation as the recovery continues
• The need to wear compression bandages on his arms and legs.

Damien has no recollection of the incident up to about a week before the incident. The last thing he remembers was being in the switchboard room of the club house of a retirement village.

“Most of the work we do is with the power turned off. While I cannot remember, I must have been working ‘live’ – there can be no other explanation of what happened.”

An ESV investigation into the incident found that Damien’s clothing at the time of the incident included shorts, T-shirt, synthetic jacket, Hi-Vis vest and helmet. The vest and jacket melted during the incident.

The injuries sustained to Damien's arm

ESV concluded that Damien was attempting to install and connect a RCD type circuit breaker in a distribution switchboard. The fact that the circuit breaker was not sitting in the correct location following the incident leads to this conclusion, said the report.

“Judging by the damage sustained by a screwdriver found at the scene, it was concluded that Damien may have inserted the end of the screwdriver into the area where the live bus is located in order to adjust one or more of the bus bars. This resulted in an arcing event that travelled down the bus system to the bottom of the switchboard,” said the ESV report.

Builders controlling the site told ESV investigators that they did not know that Damien was working on the switchboard in a live state, and they saw no reason why the electricity supply to the building could not have been isolated. They would have agreed to isolate the supply if they had been asked.

Damien confirmed to ESV that his employers had instructed all staff not to carry out live electrical work.

He insisted that he did not carry out work on live electrical equipment under normal circumstances and could not explain why he had not isolated the electricity supply in this instance.

The article and pictures were originally published in Issue 16 of the energysafe magazine. Reproduced by kind permission of Energy Safe Victoria.