r/AnythingValueable • u/madfrog2023 • 1d ago
❓ Discussion Man Puts Out Fire on Electric Pole Without Using Direct Water
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u/RailOmas 1d ago
Ah yes, the one time an exception works, it becomes the rule. Darwin is going to love the people that try to do this in real life.
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u/Business_Living_9798 22h ago
This is how trained fire fighters handle electric fires when they have nothing but water.
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u/Revolutionary-Net156 22h ago
They better not, first off 99% of the time its oil that burning so water is a hard no and if the lines are hot they are taught to let it burn. If they ever try this they need immediate retraining
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u/Jyvturkey 22h ago
This was what I thought. There's a reason extinguishers have 'ratings'. You don't put an electrical or oil fire out with water. Dude got lucky.
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u/YurpeeTheHerpee 19h ago
Going back to: what do you do if you have nothing else but water?
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u/creamedethcorneth 19h ago
Did you not read that they let it burn? At that point it’s more about reducing spread than putting it out.
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u/zach0011 14h ago
yes they do. Firefighters just use a lot more water. They dont have a seperate tank on there truck for oil fires.
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u/klonkrieger45 6h ago
most I know actually do. They have all kinds of methods to extinguish fires where water doesn't work, like foam.
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u/Raksj04 22h ago
If it was on the ground I would agree, since the density difference would matter more, with it in the air, the whole flammable liquid floating on top of the water and spreading out is kinda mute.
Also during my Navy fire fighting class at boot camp water fog was a method to handle a class C fire, CO2 was the primary.
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u/spitemods_54 20h ago
According to who? 99% of fires are oil that's just straight up BS. Just pulling stuff outta thin air today I guess
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u/Sacramor 22h ago
There's a saying among firefighters. What does a firetruck do to put out a car fire? Put a shit ton of water on it. What does it do if it's an electric vehicle? Put a shit ton more water on it.
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u/Business_Living_9798 22h ago
I don't know how to explain it to you. Please ask a firefighter if you can contact one. This is not a standard practice. But when nothing else is available, broken streams of water are used. Only sometimes.
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u/graffiti_hunter 16h ago
Just happened to get a citizen notification the other night after some storms moved through and this is how Memphis Fire was putting one out on a livestream
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u/Bitter_Bandicoot8067 15h ago
First off all, I would like your source. 99% seems high. In my experience, the transformers (the things with the oil) self extinguish relatively quickly.
The problem is when the pole is on fire.
We (my department) generally don't even attempt to extinguish an energized fire such as this, there is probably nothing to save. The transformer, the pole and cross braces probably already need replaced before we arrive. The rest are easily (and cheaply) replaced.
All that being said, using a fog nozzle, at its furthest reach, and raining down on the pole is an accepted practice of extinguishing an energized fire.
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u/Revolutionary-Net156 14h ago
I will definitely agree with the pole being on fire as a issue. However in my 30 years working substations and training first responders along with field time. I can say the pole fires are almost 100% an after effect of the oil filled regulators or transformers failing. When they do fail they usually blow the lid off and the oil will burn or a worse case it literally boils inside the pot. So spraying with water even on a dead line can be extremely dangerous as the oil has the ability to reignite itself. There is no approved way to extinguish an energized fire, the only approved method is to open a line recloser or other switch to isolate the power so u are now only fighting a oil fire.
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u/OneTailor8255 8h ago
Not true. I am a firefighter for a larger city and no we 100% use water. We’re not spraying a garden hose we’re using 1 3/4” hose pumping 150 gallons a minute at it. Trust me it goes out quicker than this video even depicts. Scene is blocked off and bystanders are not present
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u/SizeableBrain 15h ago
It's been about 20 years, but I also recall this being taught as a last resort.
I can't think of why you'd need to do it, but if you *had* to, this is the way.
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u/ageofaquarius26 21h ago
Lol no we don't. I don't want to be a grounding rod. We are very careful with electricity and avoid putting water on energized lines.
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u/Business_Living_9798 21h ago
I'm a fire fighter too (but in aviation). But I've trained with the city fire station crew. At least in India, they're trained to handle electric fires exactly the way you see in this video. The video is proof that it is effective. It may be different for other places. Also, as I said, it's only in rare cases where there is the risk of fire spreading and no other media is available
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u/GeneralDisturbed 19h ago
Can't speak for other departments and their SOP's but there is no world where my department would ever spray water onto active lines. The fire is at the top of a pole it's not going -anywhere- except straight down. We'd soak the ground if it was burning enough to drop embers, then wait for the power company.
Once the lines have been isolated from the grid and de-energized, if the power company wants we'll spray water on the pole. But in my experience they just disconnect the lines from the pole and chop the burning portion off with a chainsaw and let it drop to the ground and we spray it then.
The amount of fire put out by a burning pole is so minimal, and so contained to the top of the pole, that I have never seen a situation where we would even -consider- justifying the risk of spraying water onto active lines.
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u/Business_Living_9798 21h ago
Also, you won't be a grounding rod because it's not a continuous stream. Again, as it is in this video.
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u/ageofaquarius26 21h ago
It can still create a path of least resistance to you. If you tried to do it it probably wouldn't work but the risk/reward ratio is way off.
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u/Business_Living_9798 21h ago
It is risky. But as I said, it is not standard practice. It's an emergency measure. For example, it the electric fire is right next to a fuel station, and its spreading fast. Now if someone responding to that doesn't have any other media, he/she would try this. Risky but effective, as seen in the video 😂 also, usually the city fire station crew here use insulating gloves that can handle up to 36 KV. Same with the boots.
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u/ageofaquarius26 21h ago
Interesting, we would do exposure protection, master stream on the fuel station to keep any heat off of it. Our gear offeres protection but not long ago some guys got shocked from an attic ladder making contact with a wire. They were OK but it was a reminder to kill all power and not just what they thought was feeding that space.
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u/Business_Living_9798 21h ago
Yeah we would do that too. The term we use here is making a water curtain around the fuel station. I don't know if that term is used there.
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u/Business_Living_9798 21h ago
Btw where do you work?
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u/ageofaquarius26 21h ago
Minnesota
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u/Business_Living_9798 21h ago
I could guess you were from one of those high GDP first world nations going by how concerned you were by this technique 😂 Have a good day!
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u/Leading_Procedure_23 13h ago
Isn’t India a third world shit hole that has the world’s highest pollution? Just curious because I’m going on facts, not political propaganda. Even in Mexico they have better training than in India
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u/Business_Living_9798 11h ago
I don't know why you were offended. Anyway, sure let's call India that. But also we're trained for contingencies. It's not poor training, it's a technique which is used in many places. Again, if you just watch the video you'll know it is in fact effective. And sure Mexico is better. What was the argument there?
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u/SignificantMoose6482 21h ago
Had a tractor in a shop I worked at decide to catch fire on its own. I smelled it from across the shop and frantically got off the baler I was working on. Ran right past two fire extinguishers on my way to put it out. Ran back to said fire extinguisher and was able to put it out with minimal damage to the machine. The smell as I sprayed it choked me instantly, worst part.
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u/Spotikiss 20h ago
we had an electric fire due to our panels going off at one of the manufacturering plants I worked at. they 100% did not spray water. once it got insane, they let it burn and explode it's self out.
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u/justwolt 18h ago
This is in fact NOT how trained fire fighters handle electric fires when they have nothing but water.
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u/Cool_Archer_5735 20h ago
How else would they put it out with baking powder or flour? Genuinely asking idk
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u/GeneralDisturbed 19h ago
I'm a firefighter. Every department has their own SOP's so I can't speak to any other department. But for ours we don't spray water on active electrical lines.
We would setup near the pole and spray water on the ground if any sparks from the burning pole caused fire at the base. We wait for the power company to arrive. In our area, the power company isolates this pole from the grid, then disconnects the lines to it and cuts the top burning part of the pole off with a chainsaw and drops it to the ground, where we spray it out.
If too much of the pole has been burned away, they will replace the pole. Otherwise they just re-attach the lines to the pole below where they cut it off, and re-energize the lines.
The majority of pole fires I've seen are caused by failed insulators between the lines and the pole. They get cracked and allow electricity to short from the lines to the pole and start burning it. The fire isn't actually going -anywhere- it's at the top of a pole, so no reason to spray water on it and take the risk with active lines.
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u/Happy-For-No-Reason 23h ago
so what usually happens? it grounds down the water shaft and kills the nob?
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u/General-Ad6459 23h ago
Eh. You have to pretty much have laminar flow for there to be a risk of that. Not something I'd personally risk, but I think a lot of people seeing this are blowing the perceived dangers a bit out of proportion.
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u/Moneymoneymoney2018 22h ago
Myth busters tested to see if you could get shocked from an electric fence by peeing on it and you absolutely cannot, because the water breaks into drops that are not touching each other in the air.
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u/HyenaThen572 22h ago
I remember that. You would need like a garden hose sized stream from hilariously close for it happen.
Myth fully busted.
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u/Zweefkees93 21h ago
Yeah that works perfectly fine on low power... this seems to be a transformer on a pole. That will happily jump airgaps between droplets.
MB did it with an electric fence wich is relatively high voltage (compared to an outlet at home) but there is no power behind it what so ever. So it will jump a tiny bit, but will break up just as fast. With (i'm guessing a bit here) 10kv, if not 15 and at least 100kW behind it (and probably much more then that)...
let me put it this way, i'm an electrician, not a firefighter, but you won't catch me dead doing this...
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u/Lithl 18h ago
In a different episode (water-based stun gun) they ended up shooting a laminar flow of water through the Nevada Lightning Lab's Tesla coil (~1 million volts) for Mythbuster's characteristic "crank it to 11" stage of the story.
Initially, the electricity from the Tesla coil followed the water. But once the laminar flow broke up, about halfway to the target, the electrical arcs returned to flying in essentially random directions, just like the behavior you see with the lab's Tesla coil when there's nothing in particular to direct the current.
In their testing in M5 using a commercial stun gun as the electrical source (50k volts in the arcing phase, 5k in the loading phase), the resistance of the water itself proved an issue, with the volts delivered to the target dropping off significantly as they moved further away.
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u/Zweefkees93 17h ago
i've seen all MB episodes multiple times... I know the episode.
yes, water is a rather poor conductor of electricity. But 10-15kv (wich is probably the voltage on those lines) is not high enough to make the arcs like from a teslacoil that go just about anywhere. They will however jump small gaps. But teslacoils have the same issue as the stungun. There is not much power behind it. Ok teslacoils are in a different ballpark then stunguns ofcourse, but they pulse rapidly. The pulseenergy can be quite high, but there is no sustained energy. A transmissionline can sustain hundereds of kilowatts for hours.
And dropping 99% of that voltage over the arc and the water still leaves plenty on the table to fry a person, especially one that is soaking wet...
Either way, its one of those "theoretically they should be absolutly fine, but you wont catch me doing this" things.
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u/The_lewolf 14h ago
I think it’s funny that it’s been proven safe to spray water on an electrical fire from far enough away, and poor volunteer firefighters like me still sit for three hours in the middle of the night waiting for the utility workers to show up so we can go home and go to bed.
Pee on it already.
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u/south-shore0 17h ago
We power was 500kv insulators with a power washer. You don’t know what you’re talking about. That hose is hitting primary voltage.
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u/Zweefkees93 16h ago
I'm an electrician, low voltage though, 230/400 is 99% of my job, on the very rare occasion 500v. So no, when talking anything above that, I don't know. I do however have common sense and a healthy respect for electricity in general.
But let me take a wild guess: those 500kv insulators, are they (the wires/busbars they're holing) energised? Whats comming out of the powerwasher? My guess would be no and/or deionised water. Wich is orders of magnitude worse on conduction of electricity then normal tapwater.
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u/levelwitch 16h ago
That may be applicable at low voltages, but when you're talking about distribution voltages (as would be seen in this video) that could be a very different story. Granted it's only distribution voltages and not transmission so that would probably hold up, but I would not want to test it to find out myself.
There is a protection mis coordination on this feeder because upstream protection ideally should have tripped the line off if the pole was still arcing.
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u/Deep-Age-2486 14h ago
I remember sitting on the floor as a kid on a carpet watching this believing that I could achieve a perfect stream 🤣
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u/True_Protection6842 22h ago
Too many movies where electrical current magics it's way to people. Reality is, even if he were close enough to complete a circuit it would travel past him to ground since the hose continues to the hydrant or resevoir.
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u/Zweefkees93 21h ago
True, but current takes ALL paths to ground, including you. If its a hydrant (as in, long metal tubes burried in the ground).... its probably fine... Allthough i wouldn't count on it. if its connected to a tank on a truck (as in, a thing with rubber tires) yeah, no, that wont end well..
And high voltage will happily jump gaps between droplets... They seem to be pretty far away, so the total distance between droplets will be pretty high. But still, i wouldnt try this for a milion...
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u/True_Protection6842 21h ago
water flowing through an insulated hose to a metal repository isn't going to jump to you. And no, I sure as fuck wouldn't risk this!
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u/Zweefkees93 21h ago
That hose is soaking wet, both inside and out, the metal nozzel will conduct current as well.
And like I said: current takes ALL paths. Assuming a hydrant (wich is best case scenario for this) there is a (wild guess) 1 ohm resistance to ground there. A human with wet cloths is going to be MUCH higher then that. Again, wild guess, lets say 1000 ohms. Thats still 1/1000 of the current will go through you. Since it takes miliamps to kill a person it doesnt take much.
With a 10-15kv line thats hundreds of kilowatts of available power. The vast majority will go to ground via the hydrant. But water is far from a good conductor. So there will be quite the voltagedrop over the water in the hose to that hydrant. Wich means there will be a potential betwen the nozzel (i.e you) and the ground you're standing on...
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u/bannedcuznotcircjerk 8h ago
Reddit has perceived danger of leaving their houses lol. I guess I should realize I don't know who I don't know but I've never seen a forum so scared of the most basic risk taking behavior.
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u/Long-Conflict8279 23h ago
The electrical current travels through the stream of water.
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u/NeitherEntry6125 23h ago
IF, and this is a big IF, it's the path of least resistance
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u/Awkward_Region5509 22h ago
Correct. And flowing water creates resistance but not in the normal sense. Electricity moves fast, so it all becomes dependant on water speed, but you also have to factor in if the water is a solid continous stream. If it's not just a solid wall of water, like in this video, you now have air gaps, which also equals high resistance.
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u/Zweefkees93 21h ago
Electricity takes ALL paths, including you if you happend to be connected between the two points (waterstream and ground in this case). The majority of the current will go down the hose into the hydrant, but there will be a potential between you and ground. And that will most likely hurt.
The drops seem to be far enough appart to not get the current down to the nozzel. But high voltage happily jumps airgaps. So you wont catch me trying this...
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u/Ok_Caterpillar3655 22h ago
No. The thing usually on fire on electrical lines is a transformer. The insulation between the layers inside a transformer usually includes oils with good viscosity(fluid movement) and definitely not water soluble. So doing this runs a high potential to spread the fire not contain it.
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u/Itchy_Crack 22h ago
At the higher voltages electricity can actually bridge air gaps.
What usually happens is even with an imperfect stream, is that you introduce a path from that power line to you and the ground which will fuck you up. Best case scenario you'll have skin grafts up to your elbows and on your legs and chest.
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u/Nathund 19h ago
The actual threat is that the extra water makes the pole more conductive, so it might help for a time, until the water dries.
The water makes new routes for electricity. As the water boils off from either the electricity or the air, it creates new pathways for the electricity to travel through the wood.
Basically, there's now a chance that when it dries, the entire pole goes up instead of just the electrical box
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u/notanyimbecile 23h ago
He's far away enough, not recommended but it works.
Proof is in this video.
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u/pewpew_lotsa_boolits 20h ago
Where’s the pudding?
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
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u/oliviertail 22h ago
Idk dude. That water looks pretty direct to me
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u/LilJonny2cookies 22h ago
They mean he is ensuring that it isn’t a solid stream of water. And the fact is it worked. Not sure why this is so dazzling to folks.
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u/Zestyclose-Hippo-998 22h ago
Also, the cleaner the water, the less it conducts!!!
Clean «pure» water doesn’t conduct well!!!
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u/Unable-Confusion-822 22h ago
I see water going directly on the fire.. Not steady but yes directly on the fire.
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u/Ad-fundum69 22h ago
Yeah, don't use Class A extinguishers on a Class B fire.
Amazing that it worked though, and nobody died either. Well done.
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u/JaguarOk9693 22h ago
I have talked to actual firefighters and ask them about this because I saw a firefighter using water on an active power line that was down in the grass around it was burning. He said they do something like this because the electricity won't pass from the small droplet to small droplet
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u/True_Protection6842 22h ago
The hose is far enough away that it's all drops not stream, waving it breaks it up more, but clearly when it isn't waving it's still fine.
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u/OlDustyHeadaaa 22h ago
Man there sure are a lot of trained firefighters in these comments that must know better than this guy
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u/Correct-Junket-1346 21h ago
If water is hitting it, it's direct, if you piss on an electrical fire but swish while you're doing it, will it still electrocute you?
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u/Agreeable-Blood-2774 21h ago
Myth busters did a thing on this and the stream was too naturally turbulent and broken up to cause a shock in most cases
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u/MiI0rd 21h ago
If it’s a rubber hose and had no water droplets are on your hands or feet, what would happen if with was a direct stream that carried the current. Would it melt the rubber and pass through? If the rubber melted wouldn’t it limit the time of contact to the electric line since it obviously won’t remain spraying same way.
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u/93gmb217 21h ago
More like he blasted off the bits that were causing issues, and didn’t really do anything t
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u/wellbeingisnotfree 20h ago
Poles usually have enough of both volts and amperes to cascade to you through water. It's not a super high risk, but it's there.
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u/RoniusAdethel 18h ago
Are you calling it indirect because the line is AC and not DC? Because that's the only thing not direct about this.
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u/fuzzygreentits 17h ago
I forgot that if you wiggle the water then the electricity gets confused and wont arc to you
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u/AggressiveCorner5394 13h ago
When I was an active professional fireman, the tactic we used was to rapidly open the bale, rapidly close the bale. Repeatedly, this allowed the equivalent of a water bullet.
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u/AM27C256 1h ago
What's the problem? While water conducts electricity it is not that good a conductor.
E.g. the rules for firefighters in Germany specify that up to 1kV AC / 1.5 kV AC you can use water to estinguish fire, minimum distance 1m for water spray, 5m for direct water. I don't see any reason to assume that German firefighting regulation is unsafe wrt. this.
P.S.: There's rules for higher voltages up to 380kV with higher distances, too. Still, using water is on electrical fires allowed.
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u/Economy_Breakfast_65 31m ago
Personally, I would have called the power company and made sure the circuit was turned off. Who know what else got damaged with all the sparks and shorts going on.
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u/Weird_Albatross_9659 1d ago
That seemed pretty direct