Bandlaguda Deaths – Power of Induction Current Stuns Officials at Ganesha Festival Preparatory Meeting
In the incident at Bandlaguda, that saw two people lose their lives, the trigger was an ‘induction’ event, while in the second in Amberpet, it was a case of a youth using a wooden pole that became wet in the rain, to move some wires and suffering an electric shock.
Hyderabad: The death by electrocution of three persons related to preparations for the upcoming Ganesha Chaturthi since Monday, and the manner in which the accidents occurred are learnt to have come as a wake-up call to top officials of the government. A fourth person came in contact with a live wire.
In the incident at Bandlaguda, that saw two people lose their lives, the trigger was an ‘induction’ event, while in the second in Amberpet, it was a case of a youth using a wooden pole that became wet in the rain, to move some wires and suffering an electric shock.
In the Bandlaguda incident, two persons on a tractor drawing a 20-foot-tall Lord Ganesha statue on a flatbed trolley, were reported to have jumped off after experiencing a strong jolt. In Amberpet, the shock was enough to throw the youth, who was on a wall, down to the ground.
At a meeting here on Tuesday chaired by minister Ponnam Prabhakar, who is the Hyderabad district in-charge minister, and attended by top police, electricity, and civic and district administration officials, it was learnt that it took a while for the fact to sink in that deaths in these two incidents were a result of aspects of electricity that normally no one paid attention to.
That power can jump from a line to an object, or a rain soaked wooden pole can cause a serious enough shock to throw a person off his feet came as a shock to the officials. “There was stunned silence for a while when these two incidents were explained,” an official who attended the meeting said.
“While water is a known conductor of electricity and this is common knowledge, people need to pay attention. Just because one is handling a wooden pole, it does not mean that person can be safe if the pole is wet,” an electricity department official said.
“Induction related accidents are far more rare and uncommon. Induction events occur when a metal object gets close to a power line, which has its own energy field around it whose extent depends on how much electricity is passing through, power will jump from the line to the object. This is what happened in the Bandlaguda accident,” the official explained.
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Shocking finds
That power can jump from a line to an object, or a rain soaked wooden pole can cause a serious enough shock to throw a person off his feet came as a shock to officials.
Just because one is handling a wooden pole, it does not mean that person can be safe if the pole is wet.
Water is a known conductor of electricity.
Induction-related accidents, such as the one in Bandlaguda, are far rare and uncommon.
Induction events occur when a metal object gets close to a power line, which has its own energy field around it.
The energy field depends on how much electricity is passing through.
Power will jump from the line to the object.
