Old power line hazards Husband and farm hand were killed when auger contacted an overhead line
EDMONTON — It’s been more than a year since Catherine Hicks-Kowalchuk’s husband and his helper were killed when their grain auger hit a low hanging power line in an abandoned farmyard.
As Hicks-Kowalchuk drives around the country, she can’t help noticing how many low, old power lines are in other abandoned farm sites, creating a hazard for farmers.
“I think there needs to be a warning out there,” said Hicks-Kowalchuk of South Cooking Lake, Alta, standing in the farmyard where her husband died.
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“I hate to think other farmers will blunder into these wires. Equipment is big and there are a lot of old lines in old abandoned farm sites.”
In December 2010, Kowalchuk, 54, and his helper, Peter Berezanski, 62, had just finished moving grain into a grain truck. The grain was stored in bins on the yard where land was rented. The men had finished and were pushing the heavy auger to hook it to the back of the grain truck for transport.
The old, single strand of wire was difficult to see against the sky in the fading light, and the pair was electrocuted with a 14,000 volt shock.
“It was almost invisible against the blue sky and the darn thing was, in fact, too low.”
When the auger was removed, the overhead power line measured almost five metres to the ground. The 10 ½ metre poles were 120 metres apart, allowing the wires to sag in the middle.
An accident report by Alberta’s municipal affairs department said the “power line appeared to be very old (1950 approximately).”
The report also said the protective ground was broken near the roadway.
“Power line system neutral conductor was broken and was buried under grass at the roadway and wound into tree that had fallen at the transformer end of this rural tap span,” it said.
Hicks-Kowalchuk said modern electrical code requires electrical wires to be checked twice a year and the wire to be at least 5 ½ metres from the ground.
She said Epcor, the electricity supplier, should have ensured the wires were up to code, even though no one had lived on the property for years.
Epcor spokesperson Tim le Riche said the wires in the farmyard followed the applicable code.
“Codes have changed over the years,” said le Riche.
The code also said the lines must be checked, but doesn’t say how regularly.
“We apply with the applicable code in our service area,” he said.
Laurel Aitken, farm safety co-ordinator with Alberta Agriculture, said four people, including Kowalchuk and Berezanski, died in 2010 when they came in contact with electricity. One died when his auger also touched a power line and the other when his sprayer booms touched a wire when he was folding them for transport.
Fortis, another Alberta electricity provider, said there were 195 contacts with overhead wires in its service area last year and 76 with underground wires. Two people were killed. Of those contacts, 43 were contacts with agricultural equipment.
Aitken said these kinds of accidents are tragic, but they are not the greatest cause of agricultural deaths. Tractor rollovers and machinery related incidents cause the most fatalities among farmers.
