Did you know that when a truck takes out a telephone pole, the wires vibrate over a pretty big distance? I was a block or so away when this happened, walking underneath the wires. I heard an odd noise, like a ping, and then the wires started flapping and clapping together. I looked up and saw smoke coming from the top of one of the poles, and then ran across the street to get out from under them. There was a couple more pings, I think it was some transformers blowing. No wires came down though, and they had power restored in 3 hours.
Shortly after - the pole is hanging above the truck by the wires
Is that 2 trucks in the picture or a truck and pup (a pull behind dump trailer)? I’m trying to envision the accident and can’t make sense of what the driver was doing other than cutting that corner by 20 ft. Anyhow, yeah telephone line (power line, steel cable, guitar strings, whatever) vibrations are cool. As a kid I saw telephone lines as a potential stringed instrument for some giant creature - plucks telephone pole with left hand, pulling the strings to tension just in time for the right hand to come crashing down into a jam that would make __________ (insert favorite band, Black Sabbath, Deftones, etc) proud.
Yeah, it’s a double. They’re doing a bunch of construction near work, I’m not impressed by the drivers. After the accident they had to reroute, and one got stuck on a street he had no business driving down. They had to stop traffic so he could back all of the way out. That one might not have been the driver’s fault, but the accident sure was.
2 winters ago we were out shoveling out of a 21+inch snowfall when a tree branch broke down the street and sent the wires overhead whipping. My dad and I ran like hell, figuring they moving pretty good and probably brittle from being cold. The wave went down the whole street, it sounds pretty cool.
That is a spooky haloweenish story Tom, dang I think that you are one lucky dood
That “ping” could have easily been a “Pow” as the different elec. phases contacted
each other and the resulting force could have parted the wire bringing you great detriment.
A few years ago when I worked as a consultant in the oilfield I was out at a job and decided to take a walk when I had some downtime. Cruising down the dirt road I kept hearing a clicking and humming sound. Then I found a live power line that had fallen and the dirt road built on top of it. It had probably been that way for several years at least.
Power lines do some interesting things now and then. When I was in tech school in Kansas City (circa '84) there was huge ice storm that knocked out power for a week. During the storm my roommates and I sat outside in the rain under umbrellas and watched transformers explode all over the neighborhood. It was like the 4th of July. “Look!! a red one!!!” Yes, there may have been a little ethanol involved, why do you ask?
Very cool to watch happen but not so much fun to not have power for 6 days.
The company I work for makes those cables. There is a huge saftey strain factor built in for ice, wind, etc…or occasionally holding up the pole that is supposed to be hold the cable up ;D
Video of our recent snow storm. The first 20 seconds talk about it, then they highlight a video of some
tree branches on a live line that catch fire at about the :25 mark. Seemed cool to watch, from a distance.
The rest is news…
Ugh. More “excitement” at work today. Police blocked off a small section of Northlake Way underneath the Ship Canal Bridge about a block from work. I saw some tarps and what may have been a meat wagon. Rumor has it someone jumped. I don’t know the bridge to road height, at least 10 stories where we are. Hopefully that’s not what it was.
That’s roughly 180 degrees on the other side of the building from where the truck took out the pole yesterday. :-\
