KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Snow can be fun entertainment for some, but ice is no reindeer game.
Both can cause major issues on the roads, but freezing rain has a second punch that hits hard on trees and power lines. With just a half-inch layer of ice accumulation, tree limbs can weigh 10 to 20 times their original weight.
It’s no different with power lines. A half-inch of ice can add more than 1,000 pounds of additional weight on one power line. That's like having a horse perform a tightrope act between every power pole in Kansas City.
And it only get worse when the wind starts blowing and tree limbs start falling.
At Kansas City Power and Light’s Cedar Point training facility, the company has built a mobile platform with live, functioning power lines to demonstrate some of the dangers people could face during an ice storm.
Shawn Spiwak, a KCP&L employee who leads the demonstration, said he likes people to take a very "hands off" approach when it comes to power lines.
Using the demo equipment, employees were able to quickly burn through materials such as tree branches and car tires within a matter of seconds. Spiwak said that even non-conductive materials, such as wood, will short out power lines and often catch fire.
If a tree or branch falls on a power line, it’s not a good idea to try removing it, Spiwak said.
“You do not want to remove any branches yourself,” he warned. “Have somebody come out and do that professionally, and we may have to de-energize the line to do that safely. Sometimes it will just burn the tree limb off; other times it will sit up here and burn for quite a while.”
Even just touching a tree branch hanging off a power line could electrocute someone, even though the branch is wood and mostly non-conductive, Spiwak said. The high-voltage power going through the lines can pass right through the branches, which are often wet, and travel through the human body.
Just how much electricity is that? According to Spiwak, it’s enough juice to light up 300,000 Christmas lights — or, essentially, the entire Country Club Plaza.
“Most of the lines around the area are going to have 7,200 volts,” Spiwak said. “I actually got into a 7,200-volt line and lost my arm and my leg.”
While it’s important to avoid power lines at all costs, ice storms can cause people to come into direct contact with them. For example, cars will often slide off the road and hit power poles.
Every once in a while, a pole will break and a wire will come down on top of the vehicle. In this scenario, even the rubber tires on a car can act as conductors of electricity.
If this happens, Spiwak advises the driver to stay inside the vehicle.
“You don't want to open the door and step out, because now you are a path to ground and all that electricity would end up going through your body,” he said.
The results of electrocution can be pretty gruesome. During KCP&L’s demonstration, employees placed a hot dog on a power line to imitate what could happen to the human body. In less than one second, the hot dog burst open and became charred down the middle.
The same thing can happen when a person comes into contact with a power line.
"It actually burns your body from the inside out,” Spiwak said.
For power line workers, generators are one of the biggest dangers when conducting repairs. Spiwak said that small portable generators can be hooked up incorrectly to a home's electrical system, which will feed power back into the lines. Even though the voltage from the generator is 120 volts, the power will be greatly increased as it moves through the transformers, effectively ramping it up to several thousand volts.
"Even with that one extension cord with 120 volts it will go back through the transformer,” Spiwak said. “It might be 3,000 or 4,000 volts, and that is enough to blow off body parts or kill you. It would not be good."
Spiwak urges generator owners to shut off the main breaker to their home if a generator is connected to the electrical system.
It’s clear that ice and electricity are a dangerous combination. If you experience a power outage at your location, call your power company and report the outage, stay away from any damage and downed lines and — most importantly — let the professionals handle it.
