Moving equipment too close to power lines can be dangerous. The list below indicates the maximum height that any equipment or load should be to remain safe when travelling in the locations noted:
There are three inadvertent contacts with power lines in Alberta every day, on average, and that’s just the ones that are reported.
As power lines proliferate and the province’s economic engine rumbles with moving equipment, construction and other development, the likelihood of contact grows.
With it, the chances of death, injury and equipment damage also grow.
Darryl Pederson, health and safety adviser for Fortis Alberta, said no-body died in Alberta in 2012 from power line incidents and that makes it an unusual year.
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But there were 295 contacts with power lines last year, according to Fortis records, and 81 were with underground lines.
Contact was made by track hoes, backhoes, directional drilling equipment and grain augers.
Pederson was providing safety information in Lethbridge March 6 at a meeting of the Alberta Common Ground Alliance, a group dedicated to improving worker, public and community safety.
His work includes warnings to farmers, who can come in contact with power lines while moving augers and seeding and spraying equipment.
“Basically what they need to do is include the location of overhead power lines (in considering) any hazards,” said Pederson.
Of the last five fatal farm accidents with power line contact, he said four involved augers and one was a sprayer.
The drastic repercussions of power line contact were explained in evocative detail by Lorne Jackson, a town of Pincher Creek councillor who used to work for the municipal district.
In February 2005, Jackson was plowing rural roads near Burmis, Alta., when his grader hooked a power line while he was turning around on a rural road.
The cross arms and line came down on the machine.
At first, Jackson planned to stay inside the machine until help arrived. That is what safety training advises, unless a fire occurs.
“That’s when the front tires caught my eye. They began smoking and almost immediately large chunks of rubber were shooting 20 or 30 feet in the air.
“I do remember thinking if this machine ignites, I’m in big, big trouble.”
He decided to jump.
“I don’t know if I fell on the jump or touched any metal or what the time lapse was in between, but the next thing I remember, I was standing there about 30 feet away from the grader with my arms and legs feeling like they were on fire from the pain.”
Jackson decided a farmhouse about one kilometre away was his best hope for help, but his legs wouldn’t hold him.
He stumbled and crawled across a field and through two barbed-wire fences, fighting pain and shock, while reciting the names of his wife and three children over and over again.
“And although I’m not a church on Sunday kind of guy, I prayed as loudly as I could to let me go home again.”
He reached the house and help was summoned. STARS ambulance took him to Calgary where he nearly died twice on the operating table.
“I finally woke up from a drug induced coma to the horror of seeing both of my legs amputated below the knees,” said Jackson.
Doctors began to talk of amputating his left arm and right hand as well, but after three months of excruciating physiotherapy, Jackson was able to move his fingers and was approved for flesh grafting.
Jackson said he was dismayed that during his eight months in hospital, two more workplace accidents in-volving power lines brought people to the burn unit.
Two more occurred shortly after his release.
In an interview after his talk, Jackson admitted it is difficult to recount the ordeal, “but I think it’s important for people to hear things like that from a person that’s lived it.
“I think it burns it more in people’s minds when they hear it.”
Jackson encouraged the 260 people at the meeting to do hazard assessments before starting jobs, no matter how redundant they may seem.
- 3.6 metres – areas normally accessible only to pedestrians.
- 4.1 metres – driveways to houses or garages.
- 4.2 metres – areas where agricultural equipment is normally used.
- 4.2 metres – farmyard or field access roads.
- 5.3 metres – roads and highways.
- Equipment, either in operation or parked, should maintain seven metres of distance from power lines.
