why is pike causing a stir in the dakotas?
Pike pole strikes electrical wires, causing mill-wide power outage What happened? A sawmill worker was standing on a catwalk above a bin of wood shavings, trying to loosen the shavings with a pike pole so that they could be fed from the bin into the burner that fires the kiln. Because the worker had been spending a lot of time trying to keep the shavings moving, he asked the supervisor to be relieved by someone else. A co-worker was assigned to take over the job. In an attempt to adjust the position of his pike pole, the new worker stepped onto the platform at the top of the stairs outside the kiln and pulled the pike pole out of the bin by sliding it along the hand railing of the stairs. As he was pulling the pole back, the far end of the pole came into contact with one of the electrical wires from the transformer next to the kiln. There was a flash, followed by a general power outage. Because the pike pole was resting on the railing at the time of the electrical contact, the electric
