Kentucky firefighter critical after ice bucket challenge mishap

Yikes

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TWHS

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I tried not to laugh.





I was unsuccessful in that endeavor

the band should have done the kige challenge

I'll take a hose dragger over a politician's yes man any day.

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I'm shocked this happened to firefighters. I mean, really?

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There will probably be a NIOSH investigation. If one of them dies, there will absolutely be one. It will be an interesting read to see the cause.

There's a slideshow that gives a good look of the layout here. It even includes a shot of them flowing water during the 'challenge'.

They deployed with plenty of clearance from any lines. They either had some type of control failure or the operator just lost total and complete situational awareness.

Oh and Rebelgator, I'll just leave this here for you.

A lot of you are saying Darwin or implying stupidity or a bad operator but you're likely jumping to conclusions.

From the OP (article quotes):
"Preliminary investigation information suggests they crossed the 'electric energy thresh hold' of an overhead power line, causing an 'electric arc' to strike both firemen," police said.

That doesn't mean they touched the line at ALL. Also from the pic posted it looked like a the line they were near was higher voltage than your regular line and yet even then - a telephoto lens and a lot of modern procam and semi lenses warp the true distance/perspective shown in the photos that are taken. A lot of higher voltage lines, transformers etc. can and do discharge even if you don't touch the line and/or act a lot like a tesla coil and discharge visible electric arcs all on their own under the right circumstance. Weather, insulation, and so many other things can effect that.

IOW, cut them a break given we don't really know yet what took place. Our powerlines, insulation, transformers, etc. aren't uniform, many are old, and safe operating distances have just been lowered in places like the UK - stateside the advice often varies from state to state and most of the time when firefighters do go up in a cherrypicker the lines are shut off as a matter of course whether there's a need or not.

Feel free to make fun of the po-po but firefighters are one of the few good guys left - even when they're under-trained and a VFD in a town with ~500 people they volunteer to put their lives on the line, rescue us from crashes, and most importanly: firefighters don't shoot us but risk life and limb for us even when they know it may cost them and that whoever might be trapped inside is likely dead.