Aha! Mystery solved: the lift was touching live power lines!
From the fire department’s post:
At 2:50 pm this afternoon OFD responded to a call at Hooligans Harley Davidson on Davis Loop to a man on a lift had made contact with the power lines and was trapped approximately 25 feet off the ground. Upon arrival the lift was on fire with no way to get the man from the lift until the power was cut off. OFD personnel made the decision to create a make shift life safety net out of a tent. As the fire grew the man decided to jump. As you will see in this video this saved his life. The man was flown to UAB with a leg injury and smoke inhalation. Hats off to Battlion Chief Curtis Cupp who’s quick thinking saved this man’s life.
It seems pretty common for fire fighters to take their time. I expect there are good reasons not to make haste in a situation where haste would seem like a good idea, such as this case where Right to Repair Advocate Lois Rossman’s ebike caught fire on his front steps and the FD takes its time set up hoses to a fire hydrant rather than starting with using the 500 gallon tank so many pumpers have (which isn’t very much water at 250 gallons a minute, though). It seems like they are risking a localized fire setting the whole house/apartment or whatever it is catch fire. Dunno.
About ten years ago, my neighbor’s car started to burn while parked next to her house. The FD used the same response you described, and the fire ultimately spread to the exterior wall a few feet away from the car. Long story short, her whole house burned down, while she and the rest of the neighbors watched. It was horrible. I don’t recall them attempting to put out the car fire, they just made everyone stand back in case it exploded.
(Also, I’m pretty sure I’d have done that EXACTLY as he did. Too scared to jump. Then working up the guts with some false starts. Then a big ass cloud of smoke comes up and off I go.)
Starting about 5 1/2 minutes in… HFS!
Thanks for that. I remember AC, but not their version of that song.
Thought it was Velvet Underground/Lou Reed at first.
If it’s still energized, then I’m going to say no. That’s one of the things that fire captains do when they get on scene, is evaluate the possible electrical hazards. And firefighters do get killed when they train their hose on high voltage fires. I am not a firefighter or trained in firefighting at all, but that is one of the issues that a fire captain taught in a PG&E class about electrical and natural gas safety hazards.
Yeah, Roddy is one heck of a guitar player. He did Jump as kind of a joke. Said he thought the lyrics were just so ridiculous. Got to meet him backstage at a show in Philly in 92. He’s a super nice guy.
In fire extinguisher training, we were taught that electric transmission through the tiny droplets the extinguisher makes is not possible at household voltage. So, in non industrial settings, when you don’t know the state of the electric, it is still safe to use the extinguisher near electric, especially since two or three extinguishers used early (at a cost of $1000 total refill) can really stop $100000 of damage.
That scissor lift was known to be hot, and possibly at 11kV, so not a good plan to interact with it.
My fire department’s standing priorities include, explicitly, “prevent damage to nearby structures”, so this outcome would be considered a failure and would trigger some serious after action review/retraining.
