Glen ‘Cookie’ Cook is an electricity safety specialist with Energy Queensland who is on a mission to ensure people in the transport industry are aware of the risks associated with operating in the vicinity of high voltage power lines.
An electrician for more than 30 years, ‘Cookie’ (his preferred moniker) is passionate about power line safety awareness and in his role as a senior safety inspector has performed more than 300 electric shock investigations including, sadly, a number of fatalities.
In this role he is often first on scene to numerous accidental contacts with power lines where people have been seriously injured or killed.
“People don’t realise you don’t have to actually touch the power line,” says Cookie. “Get close enough, it will arc or jump and it will get you, and it happens in an instant.”
There have been 21 fatalities involving power lines since 2019 in Australia and New Zealand. Cookie’s own statistics show that 90 per cent of all electrocutions involve power lines and there is an average of ten accidental contacts with powerlines every day just in Australia.
“Most people are really lucky when they hit them with machinery — it’s the machinery which gets damaged and not the person,” he says.
“When you’re in your home you’ve got safety switches and the technology which will protect you if it’s in place. Power line protections don’t work like that and if you hit a power line it could kill you and that’s why powerlines are put out of reach, but over time things such as trucks and trailers have become larger.
“The damage happens in a split second and when it arcs the temperature is 30,000 degrees Celsius. The surface of the sun is 5,000 degrees Celsius, so it’s six times the heat of the surface of the sun and a tremendous release of energy.”
Cookie found that many people who survived such incidents later say they knew the wires were there but just didn’t “see” them, which can be attributed to a human condition known as ‘inattentional blindness’.
“Our eyes and our brain absolutely do not work like the video camera in a phone and we will not pick up everything in our sphere of vision,” he explains.
“The brain lies to you and it’s trained you not to worry about power lines because power lines are built to a height to be out of our everyday lives. But once you get into a vehicle of sufficient height it’s a different story”.
Cookie drew upon his own knowledge of the electrical industry and had contact with people in agricultural, construction and aviation industries to ascertain what their challenges were in relation to electricity wires.
Trucks and trailers don’t normally hit overhead power lines, instead they mainly sideswipe ground based infrastructure such as poles and stabiliser wires and frequently don’t even realise they’ve hit them and just continue on their way.
If a vehicle comes in contact with power wires Cookie says the most important point to remember is to stay in the vehicle as it is unlikely to burn or explode. “So STAY, CALL 000, and WAIT for help,” he says.
“You’re like a bird on a wire if you stay within the machine or vehicle, but if you get out it can get you.”
The minimum height for high voltage wires is 6.7m. According to Cookie, if you stand on the catwalk, on top of a 4.6 metre stock crate, the power lines are going to be just above your head.
“High voltage clearance over a paddock is only 5.5 metres which is the same height as low voltage in town,” he says. “People are potentially only 900mm from a high voltage power line in a paddock or at a loading ramp. That’s how dangerous it can be to get up on the catwalk in the wrong spot, or operate excavators, cranes or tippers.”
Most regulations require keeping at least three metres from power lines unless the person has specific training so anyone working near power lines within the exclusion zone should have a safety observer watching them.
Cookie maintains knowledge is the best defence when it comes to electricity and he and the small team he works with realised that education was the key to reducing the incidents and drew upon the success of the ‘Dial Before You Dig’ campaigns.
“It’s a paradox because if it’s underground you have to plan because you literally can’t see the cable, so you dial before you dig,” he says.
He felt an app showing all power lines using a geospatial mapping platform would be the most effective tool.
The concept was then further developed into the ‘Look Up and Live’ app which shows power lines, exclusion zones and identifies the owners of the electrical infrastructure, as well as details such as the serial numbers of each pole and it is now available at www.lookupandlive.com.
To date, all of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia are included and the app can be used to determine areas on a property where drivers shouldn’t unload or operate truck mounted cranes.
Cookie says the Look Up and Live app is more than a catchy slogan and has been instrumental in changing behaviours.
For starters, it has driven down incidents in the agricultural sector by 50 per cent in the last five years, and in aviation by 75 per cent.
He is hoping for similar results in transport. Cookie’s main aim is to give industry people the opportunity to perform a simple risk assessment and the Look Up and Live app can dramatically, as intended, reduce the risk of an incident occurring.
“The beauty of the app is you can check it before you get there, so when you arrive you can see where the poles and high voltage wires are,” he says.
“You can put everything together because you’ve looked at an image on your phone. So you’re doing a bit of a risk assessment without knowing you’re doing a risk assessment”.
A talented musician, Cookie has reworked a Billy Joel hit into “He didn’t see the wire” as part of an approach he uses during his presentations. It’s intended to cut through and create awareness of a serious situation which can have tragic consequences.
Glen Cook’s enthusiasm and passion, more so, have been instrumental in he and his team receiving numerous industry awards including the 2020 Australian Health and Safety Professional of the Year and the 2021 Safety Award at the Queensland Community Achievement Awards.
