Last week I was shocked twice, once by 277 volts and once by 120 volts. Neither was my fault.
The first instance was when I was in a ceiling working on pulling wire into a 277 volt lighting circuit. I had tested the wires to see if they were hot using my “hot stick“. I had disassembled the wires in the junction box in order to remove an old light and install a new piece of conduit that would run down the wall to a new dimmer switch.
As a co-worker prepared to feed the new switch wire up the wall to me, I grabbed the wires in the junction box above me to move them out of the way. That is when I received the shock in my left hand. After yelling some choice words, I found out that another co-worker had turned on the wrong circuit breaker. What I learned from this accident is that I should cap off all wires with wire nuts after disassembly in order to prevent touching bare wire.
The second instance was when I was wiring up a dimmer switch on a 120 volt circuit. I tested the wires. They were not hot at that moment. A few seconds later I received a jolt. Someone had turned on the breaker to check to see if some lights were fixed further down the hall. There was not much I could have done in this scenario. There were people in and out of the circuit breaker panel. There was a bit of chaos. The only thing I could have done was to walk away from the switch until things had settled down and I could get an assurance that the circuit would remain off. What I learned from this accident is to trust no one when it comes to a circuit being on or off. If they say it is off, I need to verify it myself. I also need to check my surroundings. If other workers are in a rush, I need to be constantly vigilant.
