A Day With A Lineman
There definitely was a Hit, but as far as the Run part...I don’t think that car was doin too much “Running” away from the scene. With the snow melt from the previous couple days and the big flakes of snow continuing to come down...they were stuck in the mud. After doing a little CSI Lineman style, there were more that just one car involved in this Car-Hit-Pole accident. A couple other vehicles were used to get this one out.
Surprisingly these types of accidents don’t happen too often in my neck of the woods. We are a pretty big farming community and most of the time it’s the big spray rigs that hit the wires and poles, not many cars. While I was working in Fresno, CA I swear every night there was a Car-Pole somewhere in our coverage area. And to think, they actually thought that installing reflective strips on the poles next to the road would help them from being hit... Riiiiggghhhhtttt Up here in the PNW (Pacific NorthWest) we don’t put those silly things on and have a significantly lower amount of these types of accidents. I’m beginning to think that the Visibility strips attract the cars to the poles... only kidding. Anyway, let’s get into this *A Day With A Lineman shall we?
After doing a bit of binge watching this new show on Netflix called Umbrella Academy I passed out on the couch. I don’t even remember what episode i were on! I sat up on the couch thinking, “What time is it? How long was I asleep?” So I got my sleepy butt off the couch and grabbed my phone to check the time. It just so happened to be on Vibrate. Well that stinks, I missed a call at 2 A.M. from work. I’m just be honest here, I wasn’t too worried about it. Ya the extra overtime cash is nice but sometimes I am glad I missed the call because I didn’t really want to go to work anyway. Then I sit there for a moment and I contemplate wether I should send a text to see if they need any help but... NAH it’s been 2 hours they got it handled. So I wonder off to bed after making a pit-stop at the restroom. No sooner did I get nice and comfy-cozy, my phone rings. Would you look at that, guess who it is....Work. Well I guess I am going to work at 4 A.M. on a Sunday morning after all. The Duty Officer tells me that some fellow Lineman need a hand changing out a pole that had been hit by a car. The Lineman term is Car-Pole, see how easy that is :wink :wink.
With temps below 30F and a quick glance out the window and seeing big flakes of snow coming down, I had better bundle up a little bit. I slip into a set of old school long johns for a nice base layer, then just my normal work attire over that: Jeans, long sleeve shirt, hooded sweatshirt, and cotton socks. I can’t do the wool socks, them things are just too hot for me. Within 10 minutes my Diesel Ford Excursion is headed to the shop.
Joined at the shop by a fellow Lineman, we load up all the necessary hardware, material and a 40 foot pole on the bunk of the Digger-Derrick - aka- LineTruck. Then it’s go time!!
It’s about 1/2 hour drive to the location of the broken pole. The snow keeps coming down in big flakes but the roads are warm enough to prevent it from sticking. I’m normally driving my little bucket truck all the time and switching it up to the Boy Boy sized truck takes me back to when it was all I used to drive. I either drove a LineTruck or a BucketTruck with a 95 foot boom on it. The Lineman Cadillac. It’s also brings back fun memories of heading out of town into the Sierra Nevada Mountains to restore power to hundreds of thousands of people effected by a major winter storm. Working 40+ hours with no sleep, then getting 8 hours of so called rest and coming back to work 16 hours on and 8 hours off until all the power was restored. It might not sound like fun, but when your with a bunch of Crazy Lineman...you never know what might happen.
Showing up at the scene of the accident, I see a few sets of tracks in the snow coming from the pole to the road. Would you look at that?... the pole was still standing.
Plus it only tripped one of the phases, so the other 2 were still energized. So it didn’t know the power completely out. We gather together and have a tailboard about what is going on and how we are going to fix this. We talk about any possible hazards and how we are going to mitigate them. Everyone puts in their 2 cents about how we should go about getting this old pole out and install the new one, then it’s go time!!
In order to minimize the outage time for the customers downstream, we get the new pole framed up first. Getting a pole Framed up means to install all the necessary hardware on it to support the conductors and any other equipment on the pole. As a couple guys head over to de-energize the line, We took few minutes to perform some Lineman Crime Scene Investigating, which was joined by a Police Officer just before we come to our conclusion.
With no vehicle or person around we have no idea exactly what kind of vehicle or who hit this pole. Just the tracks left behind is all we have. Replacing a pole like this probably costs between $5-8,000. If we can’t find who did this then my company has to pay for it. We did manage to find some good evidence about the vehicle. It had a wide wheel base, so most likely a truck and it was red. Check out the nice marks it left on the pole.
This vehicle didn’t hit it straight on but more of a grazing blow to the passenger side of the vehicle. Maybe “grazing” was the wrong word, since they did hit it hard enough to break it off and move the bottom of the pole 3 feet or so.
The police officer has a sneaky hunch about who did this. Seeing a set of tracks from another truck then seeing they brought in a tractor of some sort to finally pull the vehicle out. His words were this,
“Well, I know some folks that live near by that would definitely do something like this.”
We noticed him driving by a couple times while we were working, then never saw him again. So who knows if we will ever find out who did this, but the Police officer seemed pretty confident he knew who it was. I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Ok let’s get to work
By this time the other guys have returned from de-energizing the line and installing protective ground. These insure the line is truly de-energized and safe for us to work on them. With the bottom of the pole completely broken off, I use the LineTruck to grab the pole. At the tip of the boom is a set of hydraulically actuated grabbers that can pinch the pole. While I am holding it, Ol’ Cheese-it gets to work removing all the conductors from the pole. After we let the wire for the tap to the ground, Cheese-it holds the other 4 conductors up and out of the way. The pole is free and ready to be placed on the ground....or rather... just open the Grabbers and let that baby crash to the ground. Its always a good time seeing a pole fall to the ground and break into pieces. Just another perk of the job :wink:wink
Since that piece of junk pole is out of the way, I dig a hole with the auger of the LineTruck. It was slow going because we lost out throttle at the controls. Low engine RPM’s mean slow auger speed. Little by little I got the 6 foot hole dug and the new pole set in the hole. The foreman stood in the snow 90 degrees from the LineTruck boom and straight on to plumb the pole straight.
At the bottom of the pole it was a muddy mess!!! The hole was pretty much filled with water from all the previous snow melting. So as we filled in the hole with mud/dirt, water came spilling out of the hole. This hole is in no way stable, so I kept the LineTruck on it while Cheese-it got some conductors tied in to hold it in place.
While Cheese-it does his thing with the other Lineman, I get to cutting this old pole into pieces, so I can easily load it on the truck by myself.
Wire...Coming Up
I can’t help myself, once I got this mess cleaned up, I needed to get in the air. I was told that I didn’t need my climbing tools when I was at the shop, so I told Cheese-it I was going to borrow his. Then he reminded me that he has this pole-choker skid and a climbing belt that weighs a ton!! I gladly accepted his offer and hopped into the bucket as he threw on his tools. Most Lineman are pretty picky about what we climb in. I have used other Lineman’s tools many times but the stuff he has...NO WAY!! All my stuff is light weight and gives me the most freedom of movement. One day I will have to show you all the difference, it’s pretty significant.
With us 2 Cedar Monkeys working on the pole, this job was wrapped up in no time! The most efficient way to work on a pole is one guy in his hooks and another in a bucket. Within a few minutes everything was back on the pole and in working order. Electrically sound if you will. The old pole all cleaned up and we are ready to energize the line and get the heck out of here.
It took us about 4 hours to complete this after I arrived with all the material. Just to give you all a little perspective of how long it takes to change one of these poles out. Granted if the sun was shining and it was 75F the time spent would have been less. Instead it was 30F snowing and muddy...just how we like it. Now it was off to the shop to clean the truck off along with my boots and head for home...after a couple stops at the store of course.
Steem On
and
I better document this last piece of evidence
What an amazing post of your work life. I have heard the title of your job, but had no idea what it was until I read this post. Somehow you have made a dangerous job in the freezing cold sound fun. I'm sure you are a valued employee.
This in the kind of post we need more of on steem - interesting and not crypto related. I'm going to tweet this with @share2steem to hope other will be as inspired as I am.
Are those real? or fictional?
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100% real
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Great post!
Thank you, I tried my best to describe how the whole thing happened. I am glad you like it...cheers
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Great job!
Thank you, It is just what is Lineman have to do. I love my job.
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Man o man, that’s an early start time. You should see the equipment or lack there of that is used in Costa Rica. You say you guys are picky on what you crawl up in, are lifted in, seriously, no one even ties off here. We were walking up to one of the places we stayed and dudes were managing an extra extra extra tall ladder. Y’all enough to reach the top of a three story apartment complex and as we walked around the guys holding the ladder, they looked at us kind of funny for not walking underneath (the shorter route) and no sooner did they lose control of that damn ladder and it fell just missing all of us by a foot or so. The guy on the top of the building wasn’t tied off, these guys are nuts. No osha requirements here. Hey, do linemen have local cookouts and stuff too?
Yep, anytime that phone rings for an emergency, the thought of $$ guns through our heads. Lol.
We aren’t too picky, just our personal hooks and belt. When I show you guys the difference you will know why. I’ll fly any bucket, basket attached to a 150 foot crane or hang from a helicopter from a 60 foot rope, shimmy from one pole to the next using the cable TV lines across someone’s back yard. Whatever it takes. Lol.
I wouldn’t have been able to help myself but to kick back and watch that circus happen. WOW!! I mean I have done some dumb stuff in my day but dang!! Hey I guess you gotta do whatcha gotta do right. Lol.
Wait.. you mean to tell me you guys didn’t walk under the ladder??? What kind of people are you. HAHAHAH
PS come join us on discord food fight Friday style
https://discord.gg/VPd3dZ
I’m in on the channel, thanks dude. We’ve seen a few funny things here. Maybe they’re just funny because they are a different way of doing things, I don’t know 🤷🏼♀️
Hi jlsplatts,
Visit curiesteem.com or join the Curie Discord community to learn more.
!gif you rockThanks @Curie I always love when I catch your attention!! Thank you for all you do to keep Steemians like me motivated to keep working hard on our posts.
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Tough work you do appreciate it it's because of effort from you guys we get to cozy up in our homes, thanks
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You are welcome. Next time you see some guys working on the powerlines just tell them thanks. It is greatly appreciated.
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Means whenever you get free time, you use it well because you never know when work will call. Hope you make tu me for yourself.
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I don’t have to go every time but it sure is nice to have some extra $$ from working overtime. I used to take every outage call I would get. Not anymore, my family time is more important. Thanks for stopping by
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Welcome
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Quite a mission and lots of work. You say if you don't find who had done it your company foots the bill.If you do though, does that person pay or would it be insurance related for them?
If they have insurance it might pay but I am not sure since they left the scene. Either way my company will send them a bill and it is up to them to pay it how ever they may. Hopefully they have insurance because it gets really expensive really fast!!
today I had a conversation with my friend about burning out in job or depression caused by the bad conditions or boring job. It's unbelievable how passionate are you about your work. The quantity and quality of the photos, gifs and detailed long story is very impressive ! also writing a blog about ourselves jobs is way much better than dropping a thousands of boring stories about working place and co-workers for our closest friends who actually perhaps might don't care. online is different, there is always somebody for you online. great idea, man
When I first got introduced to the High Voltage Lineman Trade I was told this...”You will either love it or hate it....and if you are in between you will either kill someone or kill yourself” Us Lineman are a different breed of people...well this is what I have been told anyway.
Being lucky enough to have a career that I enjoy going to everyday is indeed a blessing.
Not many people know what a Lineman is let alone the things we encounter when trying to restore power. I hope to give people a better understanding and idea of what goes on.
Thanks for stopping by
Cheers
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