Just when you think you've seen it all

[loodvig]

My fellow trouble men used to ride me that I never got 'normal' trouble calls. This is one of the strangest calls that ever I got.
It was late last fall, around 8p.m., and I had just repaired a floodlight. Control called me and said that the X1 feeder breaker just opened up. I replied that I just fixed a light on the X1 feeder and the light was on/working! After a long pause they told me to head for the substation to check the breaker. The X1 feeder is all underground, at 4160v Y, and is all old lead cable. It rises up on a couple of poles so it can be tied to overhead feeders with solid blades. As I head to the sub I notice that all the street lights are on as well as most buildings. I called back in and asked if they were getting any outage calls. They said no! WTF?
I went into the sub and sure enough the X1 breaker was open and with zero amps. and no targets on the fault board. I reported all this and was told that the underground on call super was on the way as well as the overhead super. AND still no outage calls! While I was waiting for them I took a ride around and found two different places with part power or one dead leg. Both were restaurants and they said part of their buildings were out. But the breaker is open with no load on all 3 phases! WTF?
Both supers showed up and the plan was we would close a pad mounted switch to pick up the X1 feeder. But I have lights on in this area! How do we know what we are closing into? If something is wrong we might loose two feeders! Both supers agreed but they wanted to pick up the customers who were out. One super called the on call engineer to get his view on this. I stood my ground and said I was not comfortable with tying this problem feeder with another good feeder. The overhead super agreed with me. So now we have a stand off with the underground super, the engineer, the overhead super and myself. It’s a tie two to two! Close it, don’t close it. The overhead super, a former lineman/crew leader, and myself against two ‘book smart’ people. Don’t get me wrong this was not name calling it was just a disagreement.
Now I get a call on the truck cell phone. It’s a fellow employee who lives in an 8 story condo on the X1 feeder. He claims there’s something hanging off pole 1 on Pine St. He can see it from his condo. Pole 1 is where the X1 feeder rises up to tie with an overhead feeder! We head over to check it out. There is a ¾” rope coming off the roof of the 8 story building and is all wrapped up in the riser solid blade disconnects! One of the disconnects is CLOSED and the other 2 are open. WTF?
The rope was from a window washer staging and somehow got tangled up in the disconnect. Maybe the window washer tried to pull his rope free and it closed the disconnect. Who knows?
Now we have to kill the overhead feeder that is back feeding the X1 feeder, because I can’t use the load buster tool, because of the rope that’s in the way.
After it was all setup the outage was less than two minutes! Drop the feeder, untie the rope, open the one solid blade, and close both feeders back in again.