Working hard, working smart

Linemen are geared up for safety and equipped with know-how.

Can you imag­ine work­ing a job that requires you to lift heavy tools and per­form detailed tasks near high-volt­age elec­tric lines? Now imag­ine doing this 40 feet in the air and, some­times, in extreme weath­er. This is the life of a line­man.

These brave men ensure that you are pro­vid­ed with safe, reli­able elec­tric ser­vice. How do they stay safe work­ing in these con­di­tions? YEC line­men wear per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) at all times when on the job.

Let’s take a look at their PPE:

• Flame-resis­tant (FR) cloth­ing self-extin­guish­es, lim­it­ing injury from a form of elec­tri­cal explo­sion, called arc flash.
• Insu­lat­ed gloves and sleeves, rat­ed at 30,000 volts, pro­tect against elec­tri­cal shock and burns. Pro­tec­tive gloves, usu­al­ly made of leather, are also worn over the insu­lat­ed gloves to pro­tect the rub­ber from punc­tures and cuts.
• Hard hats pro­tect line­men from blows and falling objects.
• Steel-toe boots are heavy-duty boots designed with extra sup­port. The steel toe pro­tects line­men from objects that could crush their feet.
• Safe­ty glass­es pro­tect their eyes from haz­ards, includ­ing fly­ing objects, debris and arc flash.

While work­ing on elec­tri­cal lines, line­men also may wear equip­ment belts, tool pouch­es, safe­ty har­ness­es and oth­er equip­ment. The gear can weigh about 50 pounds—a lot to car­ry when work­ing in a haz­ardous envi­ron­ment.

Line­men also car­ry some­thing else—a lot of train­ing and know-how. YEC line­men must com­plete the Linework­er Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pro­gram from North­west Line­man Col­lege. The cur­ricu­lum includes 40 exams and 600 hours of aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing.

Like many elec­tric coop­er­a­tives, we’ll cel­e­brate Line­men Appre­ci­a­tion Day April 13. One way we’ll hon­or them (see below) is by teach­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of linework­ers how YEC line­men stay safe around elec­tric­i­ty.

That’s some­thing we all should do—and anoth­er rea­son to look up, lit­er­al­ly, to these co-op heroes.

Paul Basha
Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer

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For Kids

Down­load the Line­men Gear Up for Safe­ty col­or­ing sheet.

[PDF] Lineworker Safety Coloring Sheet

1 file(s) 1.54 MB

Down­load PDF

 

Relat­ed Top­ics:
Nation­al Line­man Appre­ci­a­tion Day