An Arc Flash Survivor Story - “I Didn’t Test. I Didn’t Ground.”

A few weeks back we had Zach Spicer on our Podcast. It was such an impactful Arc Flash Survivor episode we would like to share an excerpt below:

“I didn’t test. I didn’t ground.”

Zach lifted his hand as he said it.

You couldn’t miss what had happened to it.

This wasn’t a story he read somewhere.

It was his.

Later, he described the pain he went through.

“Have a grown man… squalling and screaming, begging them, ‘Just cut it off.’ That’s how bad it is.”

But this didn't start that day.

 

See the full episode here — 

--

It was August of 2017.

Zach Spicer and two other electricians were preparing for a training class at the "Old White Bluff Sub" (a municipal substation in the middle of Tennessee).

His plan was to show his crew how to work on the substation equipment. This would be a hands on session.

It was straightforward, Zach would show them how to do it, and then they could all give it a try.

He had gone through the de-energization process during a previous training session... and by all appearances, nothing had changed.

--

But Zach was forgetting one thing.

About 4 months earlier (and after he had originally de-energized) there was an outage...

The crew was called out to put a wire back together.

“They used it like a giant load break switch… tied the circuits together and then on that Saturday night… you just hit the button on the breaker, it opens, it breaks the circuit… we’ll cut it loose Monday.”

Monday turned into Friday.

Friday turned into weeks.

Weeks turned into August.

The breaker was now back-fed and energized, and everyone forgot about it.

--

It was hot, so he rolled his sleeves up.

First, he wanted to show the other guys the plunger vacuum bottle attachment. He opened up the gear and reached inside.

“I don’t remember the flash.”

“I don’t remember how bright it was.”

“I don’t remember how loud it was.”

All he did remember was screaming "God", and then he was laying face first, out cold, in the middle of the substation.

--

Just seconds before Todd (one of the other electricians) had gone into the sub-house.

That's when the "sun appeared"...

The windows rattled so hard it blew the dust off.

Todd dropped what he was doing and ran outside.

He saw Zach lying on the ground, motionless.

'There's my boss. There's my buddy. He's dead.'

Before he got to him, Zach had regained consciousness.

Zach got up, confused, and walked toward the third electrician, Frank.

Frank didn't look so good.

“When I saw him, the triangle of skin on his nose, skin on all his lips were just like flaps hanging off.”

Then reality would set in.

Zach looked down at his own hands.

“I know what I’ve done now. I know what I’ve done.”

He looked at Todd... he looked scared.

"I'll call 911."

--

"911, what's your emergency?"

Todd screamed into the phone "There's been an explosion, we need help!"

After some back and forth on the details the operator asked for their location.

"Old White Bluff Sub"...

Silence on the other end.

The dispatcher didn't recognize the nickname.

They needed the real address.

Panic set in.

'She's right, where are we?' Todd thought.

Old White Bluff Sub is a nickname, Todd raced to the outside of the sub and read the address off the placard.

Good thing he was quick on his feet.

--

After being airlifted to the Vanderbilt Burn Center, Zach woke up to total darkness...

He could hear the doctors.

But what they were saying, he couldn't believe.

“When you wake up from this, you’re probably going to be blind.”

This was almost too much to bear.

He hadn't thought of this.

He knew he was burned bad, but he felt he could heal.

Permanent blindness... he had not considered, he was crushed.

And from here, things only got worse.

“We’re gonna carve, we’re gonna cut all the black, dark, dead stuff until we see good red blood and then we’ll stop.”

The pain was unbearable.

“The hydro room… that right there is a process that nobody should ever have to endure.”

Day after day Zach would have to climb into a tub of warm water to help loosen the skin.

Then nurses would carefully remove the dead tissue, exposing the nerve endings and causing excruciating pain.

“I remember telling her one time, Doctor, just kill me. Might as well. That’s how bad this hurts.”

--

That was almost 10 years ago...

Today, Zach is getting his message out and spreading the word about electrical safety.

Two things are clear.

Job planning is more than a piece of paper. “I didn’t test. I didn’t ground.”

This wasn’t a knowledge problem. It wasn’t a training problem. It was an assumption problem.

Electricity doesn’t care what you think is true.

It only cares what is.

 

Here are three key learnings from Zach :

1. The danger of complacency and assuming something is de-energized is real!
2. A job brief is life saving and is not just paperwork
3. A workplace incident affects a lot more people than you may realize. 

 

P.S. If your electrical safety program exists more on paper than in practice, my team and I help organizations close that gap. Reach out if you’d like to talk.