Wrong size fuse kills six

[derekleffew]

From SFGate, Official: Fuse caused fire that killed 6 NY kids

William Cook, the Washington County director of public safety, says an outlet on the first floor that should have been protected by a 15-amp fuse instead had a 30-amp fuse, allowing the wire that fed the outlet to catch fire. A smaller fuse would have cut power before the wire overheated.

Non-interchangeability of OCPDs has been part of the NEC for quite some time, and this is the reason.

 

[Footer]

I feel a round a electrical inspections coming on with this one. It happened about 15 minutes north of me. Here is an article from the local paper...
http://www.saratogian.com/articles/2010/08/24/news/doc4c7448f94745c828503059.txt

sent from my HTC Incredible

 

[kendal69]

I did an outside event once when I started smelling plastic burning and as I looked around the lighting company kept plugging in lights without any thought to how many lights where on the extension chord.
I traced the smell to the extension chord and back to the outlet. The chord has almost liqufied and when I went to unplug it using a glove the metal prongs puled right through the molded plug which by this time was soft putty. The plug pulled away from the prongs leaving the prongs still in the outlet. Once I shut the breaker off and pulled out the prongs with needle nose pliers I found that the hotel had wired the out let to a 50 Amp breaker at the pool.

Luckily it was outdoors as this would have been a disaster. You ould have thought that after they plugged in the 8th Source 4 off the ONE circuit tehy would have noticed something was wrong.

 

[gafftaper]

I did an outside event once when I started smelling plastic burning and as I looked around the lighting company kept plugging in lights without any thought to how many lights where on the extension chord.
I traced the smell to the extension chord and back to the outlet. The chord has almost liqufied and when I went to unplug it using a glove the metal prongs puled right through the molded plug which by this time was soft putty. The plug pulled away from the prongs leaving the prongs still in the outlet. Once I shut the breaker off and pulled out the prongs with needle nose pliers I found that the hotel had wired the out let to a 50 Amp breaker at the pool.

Luckily it was outdoors as this would have been a disaster. You ould have thought that after they plugged in the 8th Source 4 off the ONE circuit tehy would have noticed something was wrong.

This story should be on a FAQ somewhere under the question, "Why should I hire an ETCP certified electrician for my event?"