Facts

In July 2005, Pike sent a crew to Flomaton, Alabama, after the Gulf Coast area had been damaged by a hurricane. Alabama Power Company contracted Pike to assist with repairing downed power lines and broken poles. Pike’s crew comprised six workers supervised by foreman and lineman Richard Green. The crew traveled to Flomaton on July 11 and spent the night. At 7:00 a.m. on July 12, Green and Pike linemen Ronnie Adams and Robert Mitchell met with employees from Alabama Power Company to discuss the repair work (Tr. 23-25). Green and Adams were Class A lineman. Mitchell was a Class C lineman (at the time of the hearing, he was a Class B lineman) (Tr. 56-58).

An Alabama Power Company representative warned Pike’s employees to be on the lookout for portable generators. Homeowners often use portable generators as a temporary energy source when storms knock out power lines. If the homeowner hooks up the generator directly to the house’s circuit (rather than using it to power a single appliance), energy from the generator could “backfeed” from the house and re-energize the power lines (Tr. 26-27).

After meeting with Alabama Power Company, Green held a meeting with the six Pike employees. He explained the work to be done and divided the men into two crews: Mitchell worked with Ryan Chamberlain and Curtis Montgomery, and Adams worked with groundman Matthew Snow and equipment operator Todd Casey (Tr. 39, 66). Green assigned Adams’s crew to replace a damaged pole and to re-hang the four lines on a three-phase tap line on Jackson Street (Tr. 37-39). Green worked with Adams’s crew until they started setting the new pole, around noon. Then Green left to work with Mitchell’s crew (Tr. 72-73).

Pike was treating the power lines as de-energized because Alabama Power Company had opened the switches inside the substation (which prevented the circuit from being completed and energizing the lines). At the pole directly outside the substation designated as Y5307 on Wilkerson Street, Pike opened the set of switches on the pole, flagged, tagged, and grounded them. Pike also removed the jumpers to the phases from the switches at pole Y5307 (Exh. C-5). Green testified Pike did this despite the open switches in the substation just a few feet away “as an extra layer of protection” (Tr. 32). Also, Pike opened the set of switches and flagged, tagged, and grounded them at a pole designated as Y7929 on Ringold Street (Tr. 30-32). When operating normally, the three-phase line is energized at 7,220 volts, phase to ground (Exh. J-1; Tr. 27).

The two poles (Y5307 and Y7929) were on the same power distribution line. Between these two poles, a tap power line ran down Jackson Street and terminated at a dead-end pole. The transformer located on the dead-end pole was not opened, tagged, flagged and grounded.

After Green left, Adams went up in an insulated lift to repair the damaged lines. Three of the lines (the neutral, the road phase, and the field phase) were broken. The fourth line (the central line) was sagging but intact (Tr. 61). Although Adams could have repaired the sagging central line without splicing it, he chose to cut the line. The line on which Adam was working was connected by a secondary line to a house at the end of Jackson Street (referred to at the hearing as “a doctor’s house”). The homeowner had connected a portable generator to the house’s circuitry which caused electrical energy to backfeed to the line Adams was splicing, energizing it. Adams was electrocuted when he cut the line (Tr. 40, 95, 222, 269). The company has no written work rule requiring employees working on de-energized lines to wear protective rubber gloves (Tr. 40, 44). Adams was wearing leather work gloves, but not rubber gloves that day.

Compliance officer Dale Schneider arrived at the site the day after Adams’s death, on July 13, 2005. Following Schneider’s investigation of the circumstances surrounding the fatality, the Secretary issued the citations that gave rise to this proceeding on January 6, 2006.

Quoted:
How can you tell if your panel can accept an interlock panel?  Would a panel from 1994 (when the house was built) accept an interlock, were they available or as popular back then?