DEATH BY ELECTROCUTION
MILLEBTON FATALITY EVIDENCE AT INQUEST (Per Press Association.) WKSTPORT, last night. Ah inquest touching the death of Alexander Burt, in the employ of the Wcstport Coal Company at Millerton, was held by Mr. K. H. Vox, the district coroner, at Grnriity this afternoon.
The evidence 'of Roy McGregor Gibbon, district electrical engineer of the Public Works Department at Christchurch, was to the effect that the wire Which caused the fatality was one which had been removed from a high-tension line and laid on the ground approximately £ofi. away from the power line, ft was the work'of Craighead and the deceased to carry this wire, farther away from ihe power lines to a telephone line about, two or three chains away from, and parallel to, the power lilies. Where the fatality occurred the power line crosses a. deep gully, and there was ah angle in the power line of approximately 30 degrees at the bottom of the gully. The position of the wire to be taken to the telephone line was such that, if it were parallel from the top of the gully on the power house side, it would approach very near to the power line. When he examined the wire, if was found lo he looped over one of the insulators of the power line. It. appeared to him I hat. in endeavouring to swing the wire towards the telephone line, the wire accidentally swung into the insulator. The voltage of the power line was ,3300 between phases, or approximately IQCO between those and the ground. The evidence of Craighead was that the telephone line got caught on the insulator and he was knocked unconscious. When he recovered he went to look- for Hurt and found his hand gripping the telephone wire and his body lying across (lie wire. He was then dead. , .
The coroner returned a verdict that the deceased was accidentally electrocuted by the wire he was handling in the course of his employment coming in contact with a high tension wire, at the Wcstport Coal Company's Millerton mine on May 37.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19370529.2.118
Bibliographic details
Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19337, 29 May 1937, Page 8
Word Count
348DEATH BY ELECTROCUTION Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19337, 29 May 1937, Page 8
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