Urban Survival Gripe

M

mwelch8404

Joined
Feb 10, 2002
Messages
604
Urban Survival Gripe.

I’ve read in several posts (not trying to troll or flame) about using knives to cut wiring out of the way during building evac.

I really only have one word to say: DON’T.

I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t want a ¼ inch chunk outta any of my blades, but even 110 zip cord (like on home wall lights, microwave, etc) will do this. Check out an ARC welder

The other problem, as I see it is you are going to have to hold on to it in order to actually cut it – it’ll need some tension for your cutting blow to work, let alone sawing on it.

Additionally, in commercial construction, most of the wiring is (ok – is supposed to be) inside hard or flex conduit or smurf tube (plastic conduit kinda like a vaccume cleaner hose.) This does not generally apply to the millions of miles of data, phone, network cables, which, I’m sure would/will be a real pain to deal with.

If it’s live, and trust me, with a big generator and UPS in my building, the power doesn’t go out until I put it out, it’ll MOST LIKELY still be in the conduit, and any knife will be next to useless.

If metal conduit is down and broken, it will (ok, probably) still be grounded, and you can arc from the conduit.

Remember, additionally, that the office buildings we’re discussing probably don’t have 110. I run a SMALL facility and run 480v three phase everywhere. Heck – the LIGHTS here are 277v. This is really NOTHING like a home.

All that being said, I still carry a small pry bar, a set of 9” Klein insulated linesman’s pliers and hacksaw blades.

Fire fighters, electricians, heck, anybody, please fell free to jump in and correct me if I’m wrong here.
 
Not sure why ya'd need to cut wiring anyway... on the low side of my list! If its hot enough that I need to cut it to get by... I dont want to touch it! :eek:
 
You're not wrong. All of our engine companies carry a sensor stick to see if wires are hot and a serious pair of cutters. If we need something cut, we usually have the power company or electricians at the business do it. We pull electric meters from houses after a fire (most dept.s don't anymore) and my sphincter gets pretty tight doing that.

The main reason I can see to have cutters available is if a drop ceiling comes down on you. Many guys carry them for just this reason. Cutting electric wires, I see that as a last, and I mean very last, resort.
 
Geraldo:

I hadn't thought about sticking a "squealer" in my BOB/EDC.

They can however give a false positive (ie tell you the line is powered when it isn't.) That stems from inudction.

Boy, I can't believe about the pulling meters. We're reminded all the time that that's NOT the way to cut power. I've probably heard the same type of stories as you...
 
I carry wire cutters on the job(FF).Firefighters have died tangled up in wires in building fires (think highrises).There are miles of wires in the plenum,mostly telephone,cable etc.They drop down and FF have died.

I have also seen guys hung up in wires in simple house fires,now we may have already flipped the breakers but you still need to cut yourself free.They're really handy for fires in houses with tin ceilings btw.

Getting trapped in a building by wires doesn't always mean live electrical wires.Ask the guy in Syracuse who had a parachute drop on him in a fire and ran out of air,before he could free himself,luckly the brothers found him and cut him free.

Then theres that duct work they use now in buildings its kind of like your dryer vent.A wire spring with some kind of foil over it.More wires to drop down and kill those with out wire cutters.
 
Seems like for the conduit and the hardened cables, regular diagonal cutters would almost be useless. Would the dryer hose coil wire be a hardened steel wire that would ding up regular cutters? Would it be too tuff for EMT shears? Seems like you would need cutters with hard jaws for steel, not just big cutters designed for copper.
 
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