Power Outage After Contractor Strikes Cable
[Updated] 94 customers are without power this afternoon [Nov 15] after a “contractor working at the corner of Parliament and Victoria Streets struck a 4KV underground cable.”
A BELCO spokesperson said, “At 2:29pm a contractor working at the corner of Parliament and Victoria Streets struck a 4KV underground cable. 94 customers are currently without power.
“BELCO Crews have been dispatched and our Operations Centre is working to find solutions to backfeed the customers to bring them back online as soon as possible.”
Update 4.02pm: BELCO confirm that “the circuit has been back-fed and all customers power has been restored. Repair work will be carried out afterwards.”
Update 4.20pm: A City of Hamilton spokesperson said, “The City of Hamilton apologises to the businesses and motorists affected by the power outage this afternoon.
“There was an industrial accident at the corner of Victoria Street and Parliament Street when a contractor’s employee contacted high voltage cable with a jack hammer.
“Thankfully the employee was wearing his full protection gear and was taken to hospital with minor injuries and is being held for observation. It is standard practice for the utilities to mark out their services prior to the commencement of a project. However, this is not an exact science and there will an accident investigation with a report prepared for the appropriate authorities.
“The outage has affect the junctions of Church and Parliament as well as Victoria and Parliament so motorists need to take care when going home tonight as traffic will be affected.
“The outage has also affected a number of businesses in the surrounding city blocks. A Belco team is on site and we are waiting for their full evaluation and expected repair time line.
“Again, the City of Hamilton is grateful that there was no serious injury and apologies to the businesses and motorists for any inconvenience.”
Read More About
Category: Accidents and fires, All, News
Joe Milk……..1990s similar thing
Im finding it hard to believe that the response to this accident from the City of Hamilton spokesperson is that “…this is not an exact science”. It is an exact science with the proper equipment. Someone could have died and this comment suggests that equipment operators are playing Russian roulette every time they excavate. Their comment should have been along the lines of, we are investigating to determine if proper procedures were followed and if not why not and how could we prevent this from happening in the future. A second concern I have is was the equipment being used to identify the underground utility adequate. Was ground utility detection radar used? Was their a spotter for the equipment operator while the ground was being excavated? Attributing hitting a live 4Kv cable as due to detection not being an exact science is an inadequate explanation.