High voltage breaker test - GIF

[CharlesWaugh]

30 years ago I was the Production Manager at a company and at about 8am the lights started to dim and brighten.
After running to the main breaker panel and turning off the incoming mains, I ran outside to see what might have caused it.

The door of the electrical vault in the building next door had smoke pouring out the top and water pouring out the bottom.
Peering in from a VERY safe distance, I could see that no one was inside.

I then ran around to see what the heck was going on (avoiding where the water was running out of the electrical vault!)

As I got around to the front of the building, I heard somebody yelling, "Call an ambulance!"

Inside one of the offices, an electrician was sitting in an office chair with a dazed expression on his face.
His entire front was black, though his backside was seemingly unscathed.

He looked down at his hands and grabbed the large muscle at the base of the thumb and peeled it off of his hand like taking a piece of meat off of a finely cooked pork rib. I told him, "Don't do that!"

LifeFlight arrived within ten minutes, and we later learned he had died.

A week or so later, I found the main breaker panel that had been removed from the burned-out electrical vault.
Two feet of two of the main bars were missing.

Those bars were about one by two inches of aluminum.
They had become totally vaporized and deposited on the electrician and the inside the vault.
Horrors!

The guy in this video really did luck out.