A man was electrocuted yesterday in West Wichita, Kansas, while trimming trees from the platform of a spider lift.
The incident occurred yesterday afternoon when the man, Thomas Gillan, 38, was trimming trees for the homeowner from a 22 metre CMC 72HD (22HD) spider lift. He came into contact with a 7,200 volt overhead power line and was severely injured, while the tree he was working on caught fire.
The emergency services had to wait for the power to be cut off and ‘cleared’ before rescuing him. He was rushed to hospital in critical condition and died around two hours later.
Captain Mark Misek of the Wichita Fire Department said: “I don’t know why or how the equipment impacted the power line, but the power line was carrying 7,200 volts at the time that the impact occurred due to the nature of the equipment the individual was using, which had a fairly light weight capacity and was really confined. It took members a little bit to get into position.”
The incident also caused around 1,000 people in the area to lose power.
The following video is one of several local news bulletins.
IPAF, the International Powered Access Federation, publishes some good guidance on this subject in most of the major languages. It is free to download at: www.ipaf.org/en-gb/resource-library/safe-use-mewps-vicinity-power-lines for the English version, or go to the home page for other languages. This is at least the sixth fatal incident of this type so far this year.
Share this story
Comments
Register today in order to add your own comment, it barely takes a minute.
Comments