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This sounds dangerous to me

0

011nerve

Banned
An area near me had some storms last weekend, so now some of the people with power are stretching extension cords across streets to share it with those who don't.
www.kshb.com

Overland Park neighbors stretch extension cords across streets to share power

Neighbors along 86th St in Overland Park lined the street with extension cords, connecting one house to the next sharing power as crews worked to restore it.
www.kshb.com www.kshb.com

The TV station is running with it but I think this is dangerous. I could be wrong because I'm not an electrician, but I think maybe this might cause power surges, overloaded circuits and fires/getting shocked. Not to mention cords getting run over and frayed. I know some people who once lived in an older apartment building. One of the residents decided to wire up some extra stuff or an extra outlet in the shed out back without getting an electrician and that did cause a fire. Luckily everyone made it out ok, but 2 units lost everything. Hopefully something like this doesn't happen in Kansas.
 
Meh. While many of the things you're suggesting could happen, many are "what if" scenarios that aren't typically likely.

Where my parents reside, the houses on each side of their street are fed from power lines that run behind the residences. Occasionally a line would go down or a transformer would fail, taking out power to houses on one side of the street but not the other. In that case, it wasn't uncommon for neighbors to offer to run extension cords across the street so the homes without electricity could at least run a light, a TV or maybe a refrigerator so they didn't lose their perishable food. In their case, few people drove down that street so running over the cable wasn't really a concern, they used cables that were a heavy gauge and could handle the load, and they didn't overload it by plugging in every light and appliance in their home; they just powered up a few basics until their electricity could be restored.
 
If they overload their circuits, the breakers will just trip. The electric company has restored power for about 15,000 people since the storms happened Friday.
 
I'd be more concerned with people who improperly wire up generators to power their house during an outage. Some of these folks end up inadvertently backfeeding the local power grid, which can be dangerous to line workers attempting to repair "dead" power feeders.
 
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