City Light spokeswoman Suzanne Hartman said City Light asked utilities around the country about their experiences with contact-voltage issues and learned that typically one in 337 streetlights could have problems. That is a really scary number for people who live in any city location. Not only could their dog be shocked or killed but adults and children could be as well. While the company in charge of the street lights in Seattle are trying to fix the problem what are other companies doing to protect us from harm? Is the number 1 in 337 streetlights an acceptable number to you? Maybe in the country somewhere where there are only a handful but what about Big Cities ablaze in light at midnight?
I am guessing that people are not injured because the soles of most shoes are rubber these days so are city dwellers supposed to find shoes with thick enough rubber soles to protect their dogs just to walk out their front door. I don't know about the rest of you but I have tried to put shoes on Indiana when we lived in NY to protect her from the salt. I wanted to see if she would wear them and the result was pretty comical like most dogs I have seen with shoes on it really didn't work.
Seattle City Light has found 21 streetlights giving off potentially dangerous voltage since it began inspections after a dog was electrocuted on Thanksgiving. The latest report was Wednesday, when City Light found nine streetlights with reported contact voltage. Four others were found Tuesday. Other than the dog's death resulting from one such pole, there have been no injuries.
Last month City Light hired two companies to help it test all 20,000 metal streetlight poles and 10,000 ground cover plates to see if they have faulty wiring that could cause dangerous voltage problems. City Light's service area stretches from Lake Forest Park to Tukwila.
City Light said a pinched wire and improper grounding caused the dog's death when it stepped on an energized ground plate in Queen Anne. Its scary that the voltage came from a ground plate and not the light itself in this case. I know that for me when Indiana was in puppy socialization class I was told to teach them to step on every surface so that when I did take them into the city they would not be scared to walk so we made a game of stepping on grating, metal plates, and trapdoors going to the basements of buildings where the delivery trucks would drop off supplies. I know that even though they don't walk over these things very often anymore the girls will step on metal plates or sewer covers etc because they were taught it was fun to do it.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013855474_poles06m.html