This article was posted 12/20/2010 and is most likely outdated.

Dog Electrocuted in Seattle
 

 

Topic - Stray Voltage
Subject - Dog Electrocuted from Sidewalk Power Plate in Seattle

December 20, 2010
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Dog Electrocuted From Seattle Sidewalk Power Plate

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Seattle Police and Seattle City Light shut down a block of Queen Anne Avenue North on Thanksgiving Day after a resident's dog died of electrocution.

Lisa McKibbin had never heard of the term "contact voltage" until her German shorthair pointer was electrocuted Thanksgiving when he stepped on a metal plate by a lamppost.

"He was totally healthy, at the height of his career. It's a bizarre death. It was noon on Thanksgiving, and me and my dog were doing our daily walk," she says about Sammy, the 6-year-old, 68-pound dog.
"Then he just started screeching and yelping in pain. I thought he had stepped on something sharp. Then he just started convulsing and collapsed.

The lamppost had been put in by a private developer in front of the Bricco wine bar in the 1500 block of Queen Anne Avenue North, says City Light spokeswoman Suzanne Hartman. Once approved, the post became city property, Hartman says.

"It wasn't sufficiently grounded," she says.
Hartman says the post is functioning again, and the utility is investigating.

Read the complete story By Erik Lacitis, staff reporter for Seattle Times

 

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Comments
  • There is a follow up story about a second incident the same day.

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013698465_lightpole17m.html

    dkidd
    Reply to this comment

  • This is so typical of light standards within many municipalities. Even in parking lots of deptartment stores and malls there are light standards with wires hanging out, plates not in place, wire nuts not attached or affixed with bare wire touching the frame of the light standard. Code enforcement is certainly lacking and serves nothing but the political entity it works for.

    Maybe if each state would take control of all sttae code enforcement, these incident risk values may depreciate to zero. Only if someday. Thankfully it was not a child!

    Rick R
    Reply to this comment

  • Grounding is not the answer; a grounding (bonding) conductor, properly installed back to the source and sized for the circuit would have allowed the fault to clear. In this case, it caused a death and it could have been a child or person just as easily.

    Chuck Untiedt
    Reply to this comment


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