For the past month I've been working at digging up any and all news reports about arc flash injuries. There are many claims about the number of severity of arc flash incidents and I wanted to find out what the facts are. However, it has turned out to be a difficult task -- at least using public news sources.

One conclusion I've arrived at is that the general news media does not have a clue about arc flash. Another conclusion is that there is a huge electrical safety problem -- the number of injuries reported from electrical shock daily is staggering. In most cases they happen because equipment was not de-energized before someone started to work on it.

In the mid-1970's I was a start-up engineer working on digital control systems. At that time "digital control" meant mechanical relays. Some of the electricians I worked with would test circuits by touching live connections with the back of their fingers. They even claimed to be able to tell the difference between 110 and 220. Is that type of bravado still going on in the workplace? Do electrical workers feel they can work on live circuits and not be injured? Or is it just more convenient to not turn the power off?

What got me started on this post is an article in a Connecticut Newspaper called "The Daily." It reports about an [url='http://www.theday.com/article/20111208/NWS04/111209555/1047/nws']arc flash incident in a Big Y grocery store[/url]. Grocery stores seem like safe places. Please don't be complacent. Please don't be casual about electrical safety. Please don't take shortcuts. Please be with your family for Christmas, not in a hospital recovering from an electrical burn.


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