It was just another day. February 13, 2006. Day forty-four. A Monday. Only three hundred and fifteen days until Christmas. Theo Venter is on top of the world. A healthy, fit man who five months earlier landed his first job in Australia as a ‘liney’, a tradesperson who constructs and maintains high voltage electric power lines. Arriving from South Africa with his wife and kids in tow they settled into a lovely West Australian home and a beautiful part of the world. Life is good. No, it’s great. But by the end of the day Theo will be praying if he’ll ever see his family again.
Theo’s three-man crew are required on a different job to the one they were originally assigned. A transmission pole has been struck by lightning overnight. Normally a major outage requiring the street’s power to be cut, there’s one customer who has complained. So rather than inconvenience them Theo’s team are instructed to fix the damage “live”. Normally, a fairly routine practice.
The crew complete their safety risk assessment. Equip-ment in good working order, check; surroundings are safe, check; personal protective equipment, check. Theo and Nico, the most experienced live lineys, are raised in the work basket leaving the third crew member on the ground as the safety observer. Things are going smoothly up in the basket and they are making good progress until they hit a tricky insulator. One fiddly twelve-millimetre nut is making things impossible. Not only is the sun heating up, but so are frustrations. How on earth do you squeeze your fingers into a space where heavily insulated gloves will not allow?
Nico tries for a while then gives up and asks Theo to have a try. Except Theo struggles as well. He sees that Nico has turned away and won’t notice if he removes his insulated gloves. Quietly, so Nico doesn’t catch on, he clamps them between his knees and removes his hands. Now he has access to that stupid nut. It makes the job so much easier and the nut comes straight off. Theo feels a sense of relief having found a way to beat the impossible task. Then suddenly, without warning the whole insulator begins to fall. Theo immediately considers a dropped object on his work mate below. Unconsciously, instinctively, he reaches out to catch it and save his buddy.
S‒M‒A‒C‒K!
Theo’s left wrist contacts the power line. 22.000 volts rip through his body like a Mac truck at two hundred kilometres an hour. A lightning bolt force completely consumes his entire body. Raw electricity roaring through his veins, every muscle contracts in a massive distorted spasm.
“I felt everything,” Theo recalls. “I remember each and every second. People say you block it out, but you don’t.” The electrical force, looking for an exit point, rushes to Theo’s right wrist which was resting against the cross arm. His left hand that made contact is instantly disfigured for life. And then a miracle. At about two and half seconds, suddenly, somehow, Theo breaks contact with the beast and falls into the basket. Nico thought Theo was dead but kept his cool. All those years of training had primed him for this. He begins to lower the basket with Theo’s body contorted at his feet. Then unexpectedly, Theo regains consciousness. His blood is literally boiling, bones and flesh are smoking. Then the screaming starts.
Theo’s stark realisation is that he is still alive. On the ground, cold water flushes and first aid do nothing to ease the agony, he is cooking on the inside and he knows it. In a semiconscious state he recalls all those training videos and a visit to his mate who died from an 11 000 volt hit. Theo visited him straight after his accident, but on the next day, infection got him. No one survives a massive electrical shock like that. No one. It seems it will only be a matter of time and Theo will be dead soon too.
In the ambulance journey to the hospital, Theo imagines what his wife will say. He promised her he would always be careful, he swore he’d never end up getting zapped like his mate. But as he feared, she is inconsolable, banging at his chest in anger, “What have you done, what have you done?” They take her away, devastated. Immediately doctors slice open Theo’s arms to relieve the massive inflation. Antibiotics are pumped into him by the truckload.
Theo wants to see his children. However, doctors warn of the trauma they might experience. Seeing their father like this could have devastating long term effects. Theo conceives a fate worse than death. That he might never see his beautiful little girl waving a bunch of flowers and dancing around in her favourite white dress, or his two sons play-fight with each other the way loving brothers do. That thought alone is more painful than his injuries.
(Excerpt from GET REAL book)