Last Sunday afternoon, I visited my sister and her husband in rural, eastern NC; not a densely-populated area but not very sparsely-populated, either - houses across road from each other and many less than quarter mile apart, etc. Sitting on their porch facing the main highway, BIL told me about watching a truck pull over by the road in front of the house several days before; 2 men got out carrying a long pole; one of the men reached way up overhead with the pole under the power distribution line running along beside the road and clipped the lower, single wire/cable near one of the power poles, walked to the next pole and clipped same wire near that pole; other man rolled up the length of wire and put it on the truck; both men proceeded along the road/distribution line for several minutes while sister and BIL watched. Power at the house flickered briefly when they made the first cut, but then continued in a, seemingly, normal manner. Sister and BIL thought they were power co. employees removing old wire in prep for installing new, but both thought it strange that they would just clip between poles and leave. Well, coupla days later, they read in paper about capture of the thieves.
Few days later, real power co. employees came along replacing the stolen cable; during the process, one of the linemen was electrocuted/killed while lowering his lift bucket. Question: What is the function of the lower, single cable that the thieves were taking? Is it a grounding conductor to enhance safety of the distribution system? I've noticed that grounding conductors running down sides of many of the power distribution poles for several blocks near my house have been cut and taken from down at the ground and up as high as a man can comfortably reach. When I first saw such several years ago and called power co. to report it, they'd come out and replace the missing conductor immediately; 'called to report same several weeks ago; no response from power co. yet. _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
