Youtube work safety vids

[plthijinx]

I was the lucky candidate chosen for our monthly engineering and safety meeting which takes place tomorrow morning.

At first i was going to do a presentation on "arc flashes" but realized that most of our engineers that do go to the field go for programming the systems that run the plant and don't get involved with big power voltages so i changed the topic to something more advantageous to our engineering dept.

that being said though, some of the research i did came up with a number of "educational work related" videos.

in the first video i'm posting below you will see a demonstration of "racking" a circuit breaker in what is called switchgear. (high voltage shit in layman's terms, this isn't your normal household voltage. I'm talking anywhere from 480 volts on up.)

now "racking" or "un-racking" a circuit breaker for this amount of voltage with a certain type of switchgear requires the use of a racking truck. see video below for a demonstration if you like because in the video that follows, if you don't understand what the guy was doing, it just doesn't make too much sense.


here in this video, the electrician is doing it properly. the gear is de-energized and he is wearing the proper "PPE" or Personal Protective Equipment" so that if something does go wrong he's protecting himself as best he can. in this video he is "un-racking" the breaker, in other words, removing it for whatever reason. be it maintenance, inspection and/or replacement.





now.

here's how not to do it. most likely (spoiler coming) this guy is not with the living any longer. both he and the helper failed to do several things. first and foremost they did not insure that the electrical equipment was de-energized prior to racking in the breaker. when the breaker made contact with the electrical bus it arced and exploded. secondly, what PPE is this guy wearing? hardly any.

in this case he should have been wearing a protective smock or suit along with properly rated gloves and helmet with face shield. if he had, he would have lived. or if he did live, his injuries would not have been nearly as bad.

fast forward to 1:10 and you'll see what an arc flash can do and why one needs to take every precaution available to prevent an accident.