How Many Fuse Boxes

Near the shop I was working out of there was a small building undergoing de-construction.  Demolition – to be straight up about it.  I was tasked to strip the wiring out of the building.  I was not allowed to touch the Power Company owned wiring.  To prevent shock hazard, I took all the fuses out of the fuse box and threw them on the floor.  (After all, if the fuses are on the floor they won’t be facilitating electrical shock hazards.)

 

Proceeding with my assigned task, I was cutting wire out of the runs and proceeding apace.  At one point I had to reach over some boxes to get to my objective.  As I stretched across the boxes, I cut one wire.

 

POW!

 

I blew a hole on the cutting edge of my brand new pliers.  How could that have happened?  The fuses were lying on the floor.  How could the wires be hot?

 

I did a careful search and eventually found the second fuse box.  One I had not been aware of.

 

I took those fuses out, assigning them to the floor too.  (O.K.  So I threw them on the floor like I had the first ones.)  I used a few choice words to describe the stupid electricians responsible for feeding two hot panels in one building.

 

Once again I was working at cutting and stripping wires from the building.  Soon though I was cutting another wire and POW!

 

Again!

 

I’m not saying if it was another set of pliers that got a hole in the cutting edge.  However I started to amend the identification of the electrician with a lack of intelligence.

 

Yes.  There were three(!) fuse boxes in that small building.

 

You can spare yourself some grief (and tool destruction) if you check first.