30-11-2017, 10:21 AM
(29-11-2017, 08:18 PM)ppppenguin Wrote: At low voltage (230V/400V) underground joint box failures are common enough, especially in central London. Some of them go bang quite nicely. It's wonder that you don't get more deaths and serious injury.
When I turned up in the City for a job interview in 1969 I found Threadneedle Street in a state of chaos with smoke pouring out of the footway chambers and clumps of people hanging around where they had been evacuated from their offices - and no power, of course.
The force of the bang was sufficient, apparently, to hurl the footway chamber lids ten feet in the air. Fortunately it occurred after most people were safely at work in their offices and nobody was hurt. If it had happened at the height of the rush hour it might have been a very different story ...
