Accidents: General Information
You will agree which ensuring safety at your work place is a critical dimension of your responsibilities. Accidents could change the lives of the victims and their families. However, they could lead to heavy losses of lives and equipment, and prove to be costly and time consuming for you and your utility. From time to time, we all make mistakes, but while life and limb are at risk, it is inexcusable to take chances. It would be extremely sad to go by the rest of one's life knowing which someone had been killed or injured because of one's own negligence.
Fortunately, most accidents in electrical installations could be prevented along with a little care and caution. You only required following certain basic guidelines and procedures to allow and reduce the incidence of accidents.
Electrical accidents, unlike most other industrial accidents, quite frequent happen to professional and supervisory staff. Actually, in some situations, they may be at greater risk than the manual staff. While the apparatus and working practices are undergoing change, several of the old problems persist, and we witness the similar electrical accidents time and again. Therefore, we required to be more vigilant and careful.
Let us begin the discussion through considering this question: What type of accidents take place in electrical installations? These are listed in Box.
Box: Types of Accidents
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1.) ELECTRIC SHOCK
2.) ELECTROCUTION
3.) BURNS (ELECTRICAL OR THERMAL CONTACT)
4.) FIRES
5.) EXPLOSIONS
6.) INJURY FROM A FALL, FROM CUTS, OR FROM FRACTURES
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Some points to be remembered about electrical accidents are given below.
- A extremely large proportion of accidents to electrical staff do not include electric shock but are caused through flash and arc burns because of incorrect way of working on live exposed conductors. Too much work is done live, and through persons along with inadequate training in live work.
- Most electrical fatalities are because of electric shocks at the lowest distribution voltage of 240 V (415 V, 3 phases). Contrary to some generally held beliefs, 240 V is an extremely dangerous voltage.
- Nearly all electric shocks, even at 240 V are potentially lethal. For each fatality, there have been several narrow escapes and far greater number of minor shocks and tingles. It depends crucially on while the victim is able to 'let go' of the live conductors or not. Mostly the answer is yes, therefore the large number of lucky escapes.
In order to avoid accidents in electrical installations, you first required to understand why accidents take place.