FOX 5: FORSYTH COUNTY – A 24-year-old man is dead after jumping off a dock into Lake Lanier near Lanier Beach South Road on Thursday, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
DNR says the man was electrocuted. A neighbor pulled the man from the water, says DNR. The man was taken to Northside Forsyth Hospital where he later died.
The Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office has identified the deceased as Thomas Shepard Milner. They say Milner entered the water from his family dock and was heard screaming for help shortly after.
A family friend attempted to get him out of the water but was unsuccessful.
Neighbors reportedly took a boat over to Milner and one person jumped into the water to help him. That person later described a burning sensation that he recognized as electrical shock. He swam ashore, turned off the power, and re-entered the water to help Thomas. MORE
It’s like an episode of Ozark https://youtu.be/mUMLKUPEgEA?t=120
Damn. He should have used his 188A Hazardous Voltage test set.
one of the questions on my electrical master’s test was to design a dock service w/ lighting, outlets & boat hook-ups … gotta know your stuff to do it right. thought I got it correct, but they never tell you which questions you missed, just whether you passed or failed.
did a few heavy-duty commercial dock spec verifications (per NFPA) … like I said, gotta know your stuff
feel bad for the victim. the electrician’s got to be sweatin’ bullets about now.
It seems like this happens every 3 or 4 years here in GA.
Docks and trailer parks are some of the most dangerous places for telephone men. And everybody else. We lost a Frame Attendant in MD to a telco ckt that had 420 on it to the CO from a trailer. He jumped back off of the comsic frame and said, “I think I’ve been shocked!”. Sadly he was dead right there.
I remember a freak accident here in Vegas where a woman died crossing the Strip.
A light fixture in the median was not ground fault protected, shorted, it was wet and zap, dead right there…
We put our hands on cosmic frames almost every day. “We” being outside techs. And of course we outside techs touched pedestals, guys, cans, grounds, all that shit every day. We used the 188A scores of times a day. And tested the damn thing EVERY TIME WE USED IT.
I don’t want to sound like life is scary, but life is scary.
The telco was good with compiling accident/death/negligence reports and making films for new and old techs. Pretty bad shit.
Erik, I’ve worked at places that OSHA would rightly condemn.
Shit held together with baling wire & duct tape.
Ungrounded, unshielded, unprotected junk.
After leaving the company I always felt I should be a whistle-blower on their asses to save someone’s life.
I never did.
just look up the amount of pet deaths walking in NYC by electrocution from ungrounded sidewalk grates, manhole covers or ‘personnel entryways’ … wear rubber soled shoes while visiting
… although I wouldn’t have a clue why anyone would want to visit that hellhole
btw, utility companies, electrical, water, wastewater, gas are not held responsible to NFPA regulations … scary thought, ain’t it?
For instance, some telco dude was sitting on one of those cable type barriers in a central reservation, eating lunch, and a vehicle hit the barrier 1/4 mile away. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Another was a set of traffic signals the fellow was working around. He tested the strand. Nothing. He started working and the signal changed to some other color and put whatever voltage traffic signals work on on the strand. Dead.
And more horrible shit.
I know, too Loco. Fucking St. Elizabeths Hospital, DC.
“Just go down there and to the right…”
“Those are steam ruptures.”
“They won’t hurt you if you stay close to the floor.”
“Fuck you.”
Over the years I’ve worked with younger guys who put their hands on circuitry that someone else told them was “disconnected.”
I like to think that my reading them the riot act may have saved at least one life.
I really hammer it into their heads “don’t ever trust, verify”
I do remember one guy thinking he could pull a fuse by his fingers on a 480 leg.
The circuit was live, he thought a breaker before it was off.
Wasn’t going to check.
I didn’t sleep good that night.
…this happened at Kings Island too in 1991 when a submersible pump showed the need for a GFCI by killing two people. This happened the same day a woman fell from the Flight Commander ride in a totally unrelated incident…
https://www.fox19.com/2023/06/10/today-history-deadly-day-kings-island-with-3-deaths-1-hospitalization/
…I knew a guy that was in KI maintenance at the time. He said that sort of thing was rare, but idiots dying while elevator surfing on the Eiffel Tower replica was FAR too common in comparison…
https://kingsislandghost.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-truth-behind-tower-johnny.html
…you’ll notice that these all involve folks doing something they oughtn’t.
So maybe don’t jump in the lake, and everything will be fine…
Was a firefighter in a large western city. Driving a medic unit one shift we got called to a large building construction site for a possible electrocution. Was told it was a black male. Found the guy in the basement near a large distribution panel. When we asked where the electrocution victim was he said “that’s me”. I got closer and realized he wasn’t black, all his clothes and been burned off and only his workman’s belt and boots remained. Wrapped him in a burn sheet and laid him on the ambulance gurney after we administered pain meds. He was life-flighted to a large burn center where he died the next day.
That image is still in my head, poor bastard.
@Erik ~ “Fucking St. Elizabeths Hospital, DC.”
yeah, me too … the steam tunnels made the hair on the back of my neck stand up!
scary stuff
worked at the steam tunnels at Howard University too. had to keep going from foot to foot to lessen the heat going up through my boots from standing on the steam pipes to run the electrical conduit … lost a lot of weight working down there.
btw, could tell some very funny stories working at St. E’s
oops, forgot the
LocoBlancoSaltine AT 11:08 PM
‘Over the years I’ve worked with younger guys who put their hands on circuitry that someone else told them was “disconnected.”’
…I had to explain to a kid why I tested each leg of a 480 circuit before pulling a bad fuse even though I had pulled a nearby disconnect that theoretically killed it. Its a 30 yo piece of equipment that dozens of guys speaking several languages across multiple shifts have worked on, is why, you never really know who may have wired what to what at some time past for convenience, and its worrisome the kids can’t seem to be bothered or even think to take basic self-preservation steps like this…
SNS, We went to Kings Island all the time.
I’ve watched those KI incidents on youtube, including the lion mauling at the Lion Country Safari. That was the employee fault as well.
The Son of Beast coaster at KI actually gave me a concussion.
Nobody believed me until a year later they had to shut the ride down due to all the lawsuits.
I missed out on some serious cash.
Never sued anybody. Sigh*
St. E’s was a Jacob’s Ladder Nightmare Shithole.
You remember if you went to the left at the telco room T… there was a whole hospital under there? Abandoned years before I was there. Coffee cups still on the counters, rotten medical coats still on the chairs. That place was fucked up.
“Coffee cups still on the counters, rotten medical coats still on the chairs.”
That rivals The Eagles “mirrors on the ceiling, pink champagne on ice…”
I may have to write a song?
yeah, I remember the abandoned hospital … even scarier was there more than a few ‘locals’ that hung out there regularly. I used to think that these were the real crazies, but later realized these were some of the more sane ones that just wanted to be left alone & not included in the institutional sickness … very sad.
I’ve become wary of hot tubs and swimming pools. A guy in Canada was relaxing in a hot tub at an Inn last year and got zapped due to faulty wiring. A few years ago a girl went swimming at the pool at the Ambassador Hotel in LA and got electrocuted.
I used to go into a hot tub at a resort in Cental California, When the entire place got torn down to sell the lot, I heard that the water in the tub was only 2 inches away from live wires. Those events really spooked me, but I haven’t completely stopped using them. One more incident ought to do it.
It is very sad that the man died. That electrician better have a good alibi.
…for folks that don’t know how people who get shocked can go from talking to dead over the course of hours, hospital or no, there’s a LOT of things electricity can do to you depending on the course it takes through your body and what it may or may not damage or dissociate…
https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/39/16/1459/3746021
…althogh sometimes its hard to say if higher or lower voltage is worse. 480 will kill you, no doubt, but its also more likely to blow holes in you and push you off than 120, which will actually make it impossible for you to let go even if you remain conscious.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26186954/
…one of the most devistating injuries I ever saw was in a construction site where a young man was standing in wet concrete and guiding a bucket for pouring concrete with his hands that was suspended from a mobile crane, which was fine till the metal crane boom intersected a 70,000 volt overhead transmission line.
His injuries didn’t look devistating. Dime sized holes blown in his hands, quarter sized in his feet. His heart rhythms were pretty shitty and sometimes chaotic, but his biggest problem was that his brains were pudding. The brain is an elecrochemical computer after all. He was technically delivered alive to the hospital, but nothing else really mattered because his brain was gone. The electrocution made it so he wasn’t even usable as parts as everything was roasted to some degree.
Rule #1 in electricity is that electricity takes the shortest path to ground.
Rule #2 is don’t be the shortest path to ground.
LocoBlancoSaltine AT 11:22 PM
“The Son of Beast coaster at KI actually gave me a concussion.
Nobody believed me until a year later they had to shut the ride down due to all the lawsuits”
.. I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about. I rode that rattletrap one last time shortly before they shut it down with my son, and it shook me. up so badly I could scarcely walk at first and hauled myself to the edge of the debark platform to puke, not from motion sickness but because it shook my head so violently. I too didn’t sue, took me too long to even tell my family how screwed up.I was and I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly.
…missed opportunity indeed…
funny story … back when I worked there for a contractor the ‘Batman’ craze was going on …. “dun da dun da dun da … Batman!” anyway, two of my electrical mates decided to run down the halls w/ sheets on their backs acting as capes, singing the ‘Batman’ theme. when they got to the end of the corridor about 6 white-coated attendants grabbed them up & said ‘everything’s ok’ & started escorting them to the nearest ‘rubber room’ … my workmates started yelling, “no, we’re just electricians, contractors having a little fun! really! those guys back there can vouch for us”
the attendants asked us if we knew these guy …. “nope, never saw ’em before in our lives” …… bwahahahahahaha!
There was the abandoned hospital, but there was another abandoned hospital underneath where the main telco room was/is. Or was that same building, but the lower levels? The one to the left of the telco room had everything still there. All the medical shit, gurneys, heart monitors, family photographs, books, manuals, files…
It was like the basement of Brookland CO. The car was still there, all the gear, all the test sets, and a 1984 calendar on the wall. And some Bell System coffee cups on the desks.
Along with hanging, electrocution has to be one of the most horrible ways to die.
Even being guillotined would be better, because it’s over in a second.
I know we all have stories of being shocked.
Good thing is we all survived.
Mine was 240 Volt, 50 Hz single phase, in Singapore.
The path was from my left hand, through my chest, to my right hand (grounded).
What struck me was the instantaneous thought being “I’m SO FUCKED.”
The other thing was the cycling path, back and forth through my chest.
Whhhooom…whhhoooommm…whhhhhooommmm
Tetany held me in STRONG until I fell back and broke free.
Shit got real!
My boss from Plant School…
anyway, they were lowering a solder pot into a manhole and the pot hitched on something and poured solder onto the man in the manhole. Bill (William) could never get the entire story out. And he didn’t need to.
Bill was a good man. “Are those more gooder?”
“Yes, Mr Hatcher, those gloves are excellent.”
He had seen and done some shit.
And as our own Mary Hatch did say, “God Bless us!”
120/240V never bothered me, other than the shock … which pissed me off because of my inattentiveness to either shut the circuit off or be more careful w/ a live wire.
277V (single phase 480V) would cramp up your muscles, which made you hold on instead of blow you off it.
(one of the last commercial jobs I was involved in we had a carpenter that tried to pull out a 277V light switch in a wall partition that he was trying to dismantle … last thing the poor bastard ever tried.
we gave him CPR for a half an hour until the EMT’s arrived. didn’t matter.)
480V would usually just blow you off of it. been there, done that … makes your teeth hurt!
give me $5 for every time I’ve been shocked & I’ll probably walk away w/ 5 grand … been lucky, I guess
knew a guy that was up on a ladder doing a service drop on a 480V circuit. it stopped his heart (according to the Dr.) &blew him off the ladder. when he hit the ground hard his heart restarted (according to the Dr.) after that he could actually grab a low voltage wire (600V & below) & tell if it was ‘hot’ or not.
saw him do it … “yeah, feels like 277” … I took out a Wiggie, & yep, 277
ΜΟΛΩΝ, that 240 single held me in “tetany”
It definitely didn’t blow me off, wish it had.
The circuit connection at my left hand was about the size of a large drop of rain.
Nonetheless, it had me locked in, falling back away, nearly passing out was what broke me free.
I may have actually blacked out briefly.
Like I said, the back and forth frequency passing through my chest was scary as shit.
All that passing through my chest cavity and heart, I’m damned lucky.
My body & it’s resistance was a completed circuit for about 10 seconds.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ AT 12:10 AM
“120/240V never bothered me, other than the shock”
…we had an electrician who went by “Bud” who worked in a cold room that regularly got pressure washed. One time someone called him about a nonworking outlet and he went over to the exposed conduit to check it.
Someone noticed he was over there not apparently doing anything for a time, but on observation he was twitching, blinking. and working his jaw oddly. Seems he put his hand on the conduit which was 120 and was also partly filled with water, and he could neither let go nor communicate.
He was pried off with a broom handle and recovered all right, but his name was changed to “Buzz” until the day he quit.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ AT 12:10 AM
“… after that he could actually grab a low voltage wire (600V & below) & tell if it was ‘hot’ or not.
saw him do it … “yeah, feels like 277” … I took out a Wiggie, & yep, 277”
…wish I could find this page from an early 20th century guide that suggested that different voltages crystallized the salts on the tounge differently, so the best way to determine voltage was by literally tasting it.
…I have to believe they “burned” through an AWFUL lot of electricians back in the day from this…
@Erik ~ I remember the old abandoned hospital that you’re talking about. had to work there, running new conduit for God knows what (apprentice back in those days … just did what I was told). I think it was the old hospital that was erected back in the days before the Civil War. they called it the ‘Central Building’ or something like that.
remember a story they told us about a ‘wolfman’ that lived down in the tunnels. never saw him, but one of the crew said he saw him & later met him & he was as normal as anyone, just wanted either freedom or to be left alone, away from the pain … like I previously said … sad
Dan used to say, and his name really is Daniel, not some kind of joke, “I can do it live!” And he could. I said, “I don’t fuck with that shit.”
Then Dan was cutting a ceiling tile and cut off that shit behind/under your thumb, that big piece of meat, with a razor knife. Everybody in the room said, “Awwm, fuck!”
Dan had to go to the hospital.
@SNS ~ ever took a 9V battery & touched it to your tongue to test if it had a charge? … same principle
(yeah, I do it all the time … lol)
SNS, a 9-volt battery is the only EMF I ever want near my tongue!
@LBS ~ never had that experience, thank the Lord.
120/240 only annoyed me because of my negligence. 277 locked my muscles up. 480 blew me away.
had a couple of instances where high arc flash fires occurred … luckily, no one was seriously burned, but that scared the bejeebuses out of all of us that were involved …. you can’t see it, but you sure can feel yourself cooking
@SNS ~ working back in the early ’70’s, apprentice electrician, walked up to an electrician working on a 120/240 live panel. guy’s name was Dickie B., total stoner, w/ about 10 teeth, hair pulled back in a wire-tied pony tail, just a’ giggin’ away in the panel box. I figured something was wrong & notified the foreman who immediately ran & jumped, feet first & kicked Dickey off the panel.
I was told that Dickey was locked on both 120V phases of the 240V panel & was locked on … only the foreman noticed & promptly dive-kicked, in mid-air (no grounding) & inertially forced Dickey off the voltage source.
object lesson learned!
3 phase flooded 4 bay computer rooms, raised floors, customer complained to my manager that I wasn’t doing anything. I went right to work telling them we need more fans and staying up top side. Still kicking, knock on wood..
That burning sensation means it’s working.
My first experience with electricity, I was about 4.
We went to a fair in Germany, think 220 volts, got a wire with 2 balloons attached to two prongs.
Balloons popped, wires were exactly the distance of an outlet, If I hadn’t been on a bed coulda been gone.
Second time I almost bit it.
Just got out of the Navy and Dad got me a construction job pulling wire.
Master electrician; Push the fish tape in here, it will come out in the breaker box in the next room, pull #12, a red, black and green, got it.
Me; Yep, no problem.
I had pushed about 20 feet in, went and looked, nothing yet, pushed more in, looked, nope, more.
Master electrician came in yelling.
He had told me the wrong conduit and I was feeding the tape right down onto a 480 buss for a motor control center, wire welding, not good.
Good thing it was all well grounded.
Got a pacemaker, I’m not even allowed to weld anymore much less get shocked.
Induction cooking, nope, danger Will Robinson.
“He didn’t care what your beliefs were; politically, racially, sexually. Everyone was equal in his eyes,” she said.
What most typical 24-yo believe these days. My question is, so what if you’re all of the above, were you a believer in Christ? That will be the deciding factor in your hereafter. Just being a “nice” person doesn’t cut it as I understand it.
As a process operator in a chemical plant, we worked around 4160 volt electric power that provided power to 10,000 HP motors. If I needed a motor locked out electrically, I had to escort two electricians into the switchgear building and point to the correct switchgear to be locked out. I then had to exit the building and they both suited up into blast suits. Only one of them did the actual racking out of the switchgear while the other stood far back so he could attempt to rescue the other if something went wrong. After they finished, I was permitted to enter the building to do the lock-out/tag-out procedure. It was always nerve wracking.
Dr. Hambone, idiot greenies think that solar & wind can power those monsters.
Bwahahaha!