I would guess eberyone here has seen the old video of the arc flash accident at the meat packing plant in WI, well they finnaly had a settlement.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/29467149.html

Zog,

Just to be clear, you're referring to the B&W video shot with security cameras where 3 individuals are in a peice of gear when it flashes?

Do you have any additional info on this accident? In particular, I was told that the heavy set gentleman was never able to return to work due to head injuries. True or False? It's a great training aid to show supervisors why they don't need to be over our shoulders when we're troubleshooting or doing other work but I like to have my facts straight.

Thanks again for posting.

TxEngr

Yep, thats the one. Here are some more details.

http://www.efcog.org/wg/esh_es/docs/Arc%20Flash%20Accident%20Report.pdf

Thanks Zog. That's good info and will be useful during training.

TxEngr

Thanks Zog, I've heard so many versions of the story that it is good to have the facts..Mike

Does anyone have a link to the video ?

Here it is.

[url="http://www.brainfiller.com/ARCFLASHFULL1.mpg"]World famous arc flash video that Zog mentioned[/url]

It's a pretty big file.

btw thanks for the update Zog.

I heard at a safety conference several years ago that the person blown to the left out of the video died. Amazing how the rumor mill can change a story. Thanks for passing along the info!

I had not looked at this one in a while. The force must have been quite strong, launching that fairly large person on his back like that. Was he blinded? I see he grabs his eyes?

Some body in one of the last 70E classes said they were working at Patrick Cudahy and all the guys were back. They don't wear the polyester smocks any more. Did the big fire there 2 weeks or so ago make the national news?

The most seriously injured guy was in a drug induced coma for around two months.

Accident at Cudhay

The large guy was barely burned. He was the supervisor. He had a sun burn to his face and could have returned to work quickly but had issues returning. The other two will never return to work is my understanding. One who goes off camera has about 45% body burn and had a large part of his scalp badly burned by a polyester hairnet (food packers electrical workers are now required by NFPA 70E-2009 to wear arc-rated hairnets and beardnets).

The arc blast from a medium voltage switchgear like this would be VERY low. The fault current is the biggest predictor of arc shockwave and fault currents on 15kV gear is rarely more than 8kA. The flash is substantial. Ignition of polyester requires 2-5 cal/cm2. The burning of the poly-cotton coverall does most of the damage.

One of the guys was in a coma for sometime.

Another update

Here is another crazy update to that video, it has made it into a video game!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2TcIHolEG4&feature=related

Percentages

I wonder to what degree or reasons the worker was found to be 10% negligent?