SUDDEN DEATH INVITED

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22796, 23 August 1939, Page 8

SUDDEN DEATH INVITED

Kite Flown With Copper Wire INTERRUPTION TO POWER SUPPLY Ignorance or extraordinary foolhardiness caused someone in Woolston- to run an appalling risk of sudden death yesterday morning. Not content to disregard the usual advice against flying kites near electric wires, the owner of this kite actually flew it, by means of a fine copper wire, over the 11,000-volt feeder which carries electric power from Addington to Woolston for the Christchurch-Lyttelton electrified railway. The kite string came, down across the feeder wire and the 1500-volt overhead gear of the railway line, and the consequences were as follows: Electric power was interrupted. Electric train services were delayed. A railway employee narrowly escaped fatal electric shock. Members of the public were exposed to the same risk. Just how the kite-flyer escaped the current when his line fell across the high-tension wires has not been explained, because Railway Department and Public Works Department officials have not yet traced the owner of the kite and the wire. It is assumed that.the wire broke while the kite was in the air so that when the wire fell across the high-tension lines it was no longer in contact with its owner. The shorting of the electric circuit caused an interruption of about eight minutes in the operation of. the Lyttelton railway line, and, subsequently, further delay while the trailing ends of wire were disengaged from the pantographs of two electric locomotives. Railway Employee’s Escape \ The interruption to the power, supply came half a minute before 10 a.m. Patrol officers of the Public Works Department immediately set out to find the cause of the break, and a crossing-keeper at Ensor’s road provided the necessary clue when he informed a patrol that he had seen an electric flash a little distance down the line.. . Power, which had been interrupted by the automatic operation of circuit-breakers as soon as the short-circuit occurred in the feeder line, was restored at 10.6, and the-elec-tric ■ trains resumed running two minutes later. A train which, pulled in to the Woolston station carried a further clue to the cause of the stoppage, because it was trailing a long length of fine cotton-covered copper wire. Meanwhile a further length of this wire had been found by the patrols hanging from the overhead railway wires adjacent -to the Christchurch Technical College .sports ground at Ensor’s road. ’ ; Because it looked like a piece of string, the suspended, length of .wire was not at first regarded' with ■ suspicion, and a railway surfaceman " was abouUto buUvit down, .fortunately—' for tiie hanging wire'was thefi carrying a charge of 1500 volts—an electrical equipment officer warned him not; to touch it. The patrol officer donned rubber gloves before handling the innocent-looking “string,” a precaution which was shown to be fully justified when the “string” was found to be copper wire. Discovery of the cause of the power interruption left Public Works Department officers aghast. “It is simply extraordinary that anyone could be so foolish as to fly a kite attached to a wire or. allow any child to do such a thing,” said Mr R. G. MacGibbon, district electrical engineer to the Public Works Department, yesterday. “It is dangerous enough to fly kites with string or cotton, especially in, rainy or damp weather, but to use wire is simply an invitation to sudden death from any electric wire, hightension or low-tension, with which the kite comes in contact. Children and their parents cannot too strongly be warned of the danger generally of flying kites near electric wires.”