Darwin Award winner?

Darwin Award Winner, there.

Speaking as an HVAC tradesman as well, when your unit siezes up or does something out of the ordinary and there's humming or the unit gets really hot, JUST SHUT OFF THE POWER AND CALL A PROFESSIONAL.

If you touch the wrong part or combination of parts your hands can be burnt with acid, fingertips blown off from electricity, your heart stopped, or a combination of things including dismemberment and or toxic environment damage.

My sympathy goes out to this mans family, but let's hope his death serves as a warning and reminder that electricity kills.

Natural selection at work.

"Electrocuted to death" is redundant. Electrocution requires death.

@ColonelK: thank you. Laura, you really should fix your post.

Nothing like a little chlorine for the gene pool...

I watched a neighbor cutting tree limbs and some power lines ran through them. One of the branches fell and knocked the 2 lines together. A blue fireball ran down the lines until they were far enough apart near the next pole to break the connection...and the trees that they ran through were singed.

Cool to watch but scared the sh!t out of the guy on the ladder.

@ColonelK: But Death doesn't require electrocution. But we require electricity to live, and prevent death.

I just blew your mind!

GI Joe did a PSA for downed electrical lines in the past. I prefer the parody, though.

I learned not to touch electrical lines from GI Joe. Seems like this guy was a little to old to remember not to touch them. or get body massages from strange guys.

The line was down for seven hours?! I may think about moving the line myself if my power was down for seven hours.

@nato0519: Touching the live wire doesn't get your power back on, it just gets you killed. Or do you mean "if I can't get on Facebook for seven hours, I'd rather be dead!"

@ColonelK: What about people who are electrocuted for a short period of time? Like they got struck by lightening, or they tried to stick a fork in an outlet or tried to get their toast out of the toaster with a knife? You can be electrocuted and not killed.

@Starfury: I was once filling up at a gas station and watched a guy in a landscaping bucket truck go up and saw the angle part where it bends was behind him and getting close to a power line about 100feet away. He kept going and arced two lines, which resulted in a huge flash and a bang. He lowered himself a little. He then DID IT AGAIN!

On the plus side, it caused a power stutter at the gas station, and my credit card was never charged for my near fill-up(it took about 30 seconds after the second arc for the power to come back, and by then, the attendant had hung my nozzle).

@squinko - doesn't need firefighters: You can also be brought back to life sometimes afterwards. So you WERE electrocuted.

@nato0519: back in 1996, Hurricane Fran did some significant damage to Raleigh, NC (iirc, i was out of school for more than a week)
our power was out for at least 5 days.

@SeniorPonzologist_GitEmSteveDave: Electrocuted to life? Sounds like a metal song.

@nato0519: You obviously aren't from SW Ohio, Northern Kentucky or SE Indiana. Just this past September, we had the "Remnants of Hurricane Ike" blow through with straight line winds up to 80 MPH. 95% of this region was out of power with some out for more than a week. My power went out on Sunday afternoon and was not restored until Thursday morning. Here's the worst of it--we are the very last house on a cul-de-sac, the diving house between the north-facing houses and south-facing houses. ALL of the north-facing houses (including our immediate neighbor) had their power restored that Sunday night, while we were without for 4 more days. Ridiculous.

@ColonelK: True. It's kind of like drowning that way.

@LeahReindeer: But you can also drown and come out alive.

@squinko - doesn't need firefighters: Electrocution = electricity + execution -- death is required. Being hit by electricity and surviving is called being shocked. Same with drowning, that's defined as death from suffocation due to liquid in the lungs. If you don't die from it then it's not drowning, it's "near drowning" or something similar. There are other definitions of drowning that don't involve death, e.g. drowning your pancakes in syrup, but none for electrocution.

@SeniorPonzologist_GitEmSteveDave: No, you can't. By definition drowning, and electrocution, mean death.

It's amazing to me that people would rather argue these things -- and be dead wrong -- rather than take few seconds to Google it.

@Gospel X: Haha I love those. There's like a combination video of these somewhere on youtube.

ComEd seems to only cut our power during clear weather. They also do a thing called a "brown out" that fried a VCR I once owned. Since then, all of my sensitive electronic equipment is on battery backup.

@bonafidebob: It's either/or:
electrocute |iˈlektrəˌkyoōt|
verb [ trans. ] (often be electrocuted)
injure or kill someone by electric shock : a man was electrocuted when he switched on the Christmas tree lights.
• execute (a convicted criminal) by means of the electric chair.

@seattlemaninblue: Hee. Ironic, huh?
How about we compromise with, common usage favors "shocked to death", but alternate, reputable meanings also support its use as a synonym for "shocked until your hair is frizzy"?

But this runs counter to the "it's much cheaper if you do it yourself at home" advice, no?
Well, at least my streaming electrons are organic and range-free. Harumph.

Igor would approve of this story.
Err, if he could find the remnants of several corpses first.

@Chumas: How do downed power lines have anything to do with HVAC? And where does the acid come from?

@seattlemaninblue: True, but you can be legally dead for an amount of time, and still be brought back from "death". Think about kids that drown in the ice, and they bring them back after an hour.

@SeniorPonzologist_GitEmSteveDave: And zombies. Don't forget zombies. Never forget the zombies!

@NYGal81:

We get that too. The houses across the street are on another grid and they got turned on after the ice storm (no power for 12 days, below-freezing highs the whole time) a day before we did. Sucked.

@Trai_Dep: It's Eye-Gore.

@Gospel X: I hope the new G.I. Joe movie has PSA's.