On March 22, 2015 at 10:38, Neurorad said...
I'll mention I that guy in the shower was shocked because the house was grounded.
Your word "think" did not appear. Please stick around long enough to read your own posts! What you wrote doesn't make sense until the Quote window is open.
By the way, I must be one who doesn't understand grounding, and/or the TV article does not present the situation properly.
A power line hit the ground. The ground must not be bone dry; that's normal, so at that place you can measure a voltage actually in the ground, decreasing with distance from the wire... unless there's a pipe nearby. That pipe will have a lower resistance than the soil, so will act as a conduit (good term!) for the raised voltage, taking it into the house.
The guy who got a shock touched a pipe, probably connected to one that passed near the wire on the ground -- and BECAUSE HIS DRAIN WAS GROUNDED, he got a shock.
A cable grounding rod, located near where the wire went down, would similarly be at a potential above ground, and could feed current into the cable system to... wait for it... it's about to be here... a properly grounded cable box, which would then fry.
Neurorad is real close, I think. I'll bet the guy got a shock because his water pipe was at a voltage above normal ground, and the shock was from his pipe through him to the drain... often a metal pipe, but not connected to ground where the water pipe is connected. Actually, the guy would not have gotten a shock if his water pipe had been connected to his drain pipe system -- and who does that?
From the video:
"Once the line falls, firefighters say it energizes a surrounding area. Electricity possibly follows a pipe into the shock victim's home, and backfeeds a cable line that causes a nearby home to catch fire.
[The firefighter's edited quote starts] "power lines or the power system was grounded to the water pipes. Uh, old homes using galvanized water piping; easiest way duh for an electrician to do it. (He didn't say "duh" but there's an unintelligible syllable right there.)
First, there is zero reason for him to mention galvanized pipe. Copper pipe would have probably delivered a heftier shock. The rest of what he says does not support either the guy's shock or the cable box fire.
After that, the article says several homes were without power, but not once was proper or improper grounding, or checking for good grounds, mentioned.
This fire and this shock happened because things were grounded and because shit happens.
