Boy's electrocution ruled accidental

I hope she wins. Those volunteers should have hired a qualified electrician and pulled a permit for the installation.

Hmmm, and I just replied a few weeks ago about the use of conduit as a ground conductor. The subject was the use of screw connectors and couplers vs outdoor weathertite fittings I believe.

My heart and condolences goes out to the family of this unfortunate incident.

Not ALL shoes are insulators.

The installation was 14 years old, in a rainy state. They say "the" ground wire was not connected. Was there a ground wire installed and not connected, or was the conduit used as the ground path? The article makes it inconclusive to determine.

as usual . . .every stupid act can be fixed with yet another Law instead of the imposition of common sense and craftmenship. Why in heavens name would they sue the Softball Team . .Lord have Mercy . . .the school allowed the "volunteers" to install a system with a KNOWN lethality . .common sense would have dictated that the school at the very least have a qualified electrician supervise and inspect all work done.

There .WAS A LAW IN PLACE . .the National Electrical Code but as it always seems stupid prevailes . . .if the parents actually want to do some good ,sue the school system to have the electrical system brought up to . .at least...a safe benchmark. . . sueing to pocket cash....typical...solves nothing certainly wont benefit anyone save the blood sucking lawyers

I hate these stories . . .but they will always be read in another days head lines because STUPID abounds !

Where was the Inspecting Authority at the time of installation?

This is a very unfortunate accident that could have been prevented. I reside in CA and I am a licensed electrician as well as the Safety/Security Officer for Pittsburg National Little league. We have lights on several fields we use that are owned and maintained by the City of Pittsburg. Little League International requires that I submit an inspection report on the condition of the lighting annually as part of our safety program. This safety program is required by ALL leagues across the United States. If these programs are not submitted the league is not given a charter .There are a few issues that I can see here: 1)The local softball league with the school district needs to adopt a safety plan regardless of what facility is used.

2)School district needs to perform annual inspections of its facilities for obvious reasons.

3) No electrical work should be allowed by untrained personel or "un-qualified" per NEC wording. This is not where you need to be cutting corners to save money.

I know these leagues are mostly volunteer and it's not easy to put it all together but the code is in place to prevent tragedies like this one.

My heart goes out to the families of those invoved. This was supposed to be a family outing that went horribly wrong!

The article talks about grounding...I think they really mean bonding - there was no intentional low impedance path back to the source.

I suspect this is a case where conductors were run to a totally isolated metal raceway and that the only purpose of this raceway was to protect the conductors. In a word, this raceway was not bonded or had become disconnected and the bond broken. Here a separate equipment ground would not have prevented the death. The hot conductor would have contacted the raceway without making a circuit. The conduit like the conductor was simply hot to earth. This is why it is essential to bond metal raceway regardless of any additional equipment ground. Simply earth grounding the pole raceway would have also not prevented an electrocution. I would always use schedule 80 PVC to protect a short run of conductors unless I could assure a permanent bond for the metal raceway.

To better inspect the danger of hot unbonded raceway as well as similar conditions where there is a high potential exposure to the public i have avocated the use of sensitive electric field detectors and electric field measuring. I have 6 separate detectors and when i'm working I carry a least two. Sensitive detectors require practice or training to use but one would have detected the danger from this pole from 2 feet away and would have done it in seconds. Electric field measuring is best done with a field measuring meter. A good one runs about $500. but gives quantitative indication. A detector just gives an alert and only checks a single axis at a time. The only reliable electric field METER for a field environment (not lab) that I know of is made in Germany. The best general pupose AC field detector I found is made by Greenlee, the GT-16. It has a 5 to 1000 volt range and runs about 30 bucks.

There has been worse around here in Ohio. Some amount of time back, USA Today installed a newspaper dispenser on a public sidewalk and drilled into a Cleveland Public Power 480 volt streetlighting conduit. Next time it rained, a USA Today customer ended up looking ast the bottom side of the grass.

USA Today's crew did not notice any sparking because the central controller turned off the power during the daytime. Even if the installation had been 100% Code, this tragedy would still have occured.

The burial depth that NEC allows underneath a public sidewalk is what, 4 inches? Public sidewalks need to be reclassified as a public thoroughfare with a minimum burial depth of 18 inches for PVC or steel conduit.

There are a few LIES in National Electrical Code which is why there is a public comment period. A lot of things in NEC were learned the hard way and not the laboratory way.

They say there is no law there, I would beg to differ. Is there not a law for installation of such items that they must be inspected prior to being placed into service.

Then the inspection did not take place or the inspector was not up to speed.

The boy was not killed instantly but died next day perhaps due to serious internal injury.Possibly,intensive medical care might have saved the boy.Wouldn't it?