Well, those all might be obvious: Don’t play with matches, Don’t run with scissors, and Don’t cut the power line with a shovel. But perhaps that last one, don’t cut the power line with a shovel might be a very good one to remember.
Last week we were fixing a fence post that had been broken for a long time. My brother-in-law was helping with the shovel, and I was digging out dirt with a little garden shovel when POP!!!! there was a loud bang and sparks when flying everywhere. He got his shirt burned from the sparks, sparks landed all over my arms as we both jumped back.
Fortunately, the shovel just grazed the side of the two power lines. The odd thing about the lines is that they were only 6 inches deep (if that) when they should be a lot deeper.
The blast hit the back of the shovel, in doing so, it probably saved me a number of burns because I was on the other side right down by the hole. The back of the shovel melted from the electricity. There were melted drips of metal that came down from the blast point but flaked off by the time I took this picture because we still had to use the shovel to dig and move the dirt.
Neither of us were hurt, but we did receive a bit of a shock (metaphorically speaking, not literally). We can’t say the same for the shovel.
We waited for someone from the power company to come and fix the line. When the worked arrived, he buried the line deep like it should be. The Power Man also said that it looked like the line had been hit and then repaired previously most likely when the fence was first built. It didn’t help that he thought he hit the telephone line while he was fixing our line, but everything looked okay, and our neighbors haven’t called us to tell us that their phones aren’t working 
. We made sure that their phone was working.
Lesson learned? Call Blue Stakes and make sure you know how deep the lines are.
