Vasily Strakha from Luknovo, Koropsky district, ended up in the ATO zone when he was only 20. He is the youngest mobilized in the entire region. Vasya celebrated his 21st birthday in a trench in the Donetsk region. And a month later, in May last year, he almost died - a current discharge of 10,000 volts passed through his body.
He was demobilized last September. He talks about his experiences during the war with a little embarrassment.
“I really wanted to join the army, so when the summons came for military service (and then to the ATO zone), there was no thought about “sloping off,” says Vasily. — I did my military service first in Desna, and then in Crimea. It coincided that as soon as I served and returned home, the occupation of the peninsula began. I stayed at home for six months, worked as a tractor driver, and then I was mobilized to the ATO zone.
He ended up in the 25th Airborne Brigade and was a machine gunner in a reconnaissance airborne company. A year ago, in January, we stood near Avdeevka, Donetsk region. I'll be honest: it was difficult. They fired at us harshly - from mortars, "grads"... I remember the first shelling most of all, because then I was very scared, if it weren't for the experienced guys, I don't know how I would have survived. I experienced the subsequent shelling more calmly and did not panic so much.
I got used to it and acted automatically. Over time, some kind of intuition even appeared, which more than once saved the lives of me and my brothers-in-arms. One day we were chatting with the guys, and my heart became so anxious! I say: “Guys, let’s get out of here. Let's move to another place." And we had just crossed over when a shell fell and exploded where we were! Can you imagine?!
The guys then joked that I was a seer. And once, during a mortar attack, I and another soldier were hiding in a trench. I did not sit next to him, but opposite him. And right before my eyes, a shrapnel hit him and pierced his bulletproof vest. I couldn’t do anything, he died in my arms... Experiencing this is the most difficult thing.
After Avdeevka, I served near Konstantinovka, Donetsk region. One day, my comrades and I were observing the area from our checkpoint. We see: some car is driving not far from the railway track. My partner Zhenya and I went on reconnaissance to find out what kind of car it was and what it was doing there. As soon as they began to approach, the car drove away, leaving two men behind.
They saw us and began to run away. We are behind them. While running along the path, I did not notice the broken high-voltage wire and hooked it with a machine gun. I remember being thrown up and falling a few meters from that place. All he had time to do was shout: “Zhenya, save me!” And he passed out.
Zhenya ran up and began to give me artificial respiration and cardiac massage. I woke up, but I couldn’t move - it felt like my whole body was numb. My right leg hurt very badly. We saw a large round wound a little above the foot. Zhenya gave me some water to drink and tried to get me to my feet, but I couldn’t walk. Then he carried me on his shoulders, but on the road to the checkpoint there was a small hill that he did not have the strength to cross. Gathering my will into a fist, I began to help him, pushing a little with my feet. We crossed a hill and a forest plantation, and then our guys came running to help. I was taken to the hospital in Konstantinovka.
The doctors said that I survived miraculously because she railway high voltage line with a voltage of 10,000 volts! The current passed through the whole body and exited through the leg. I experienced clinical death and received a third degree concussion. And one elderly nurse said: “You’re lucky, boy, that you have a cross and a church ribbon on your hand.” My mother gave me a cross and a ribbon. Maybe they really saved me. I decided to tell my mother about what happened to me only the next day, when I was transported to Dimitrov, Donetsk region.
“He called and said: “Mom, what are you doing?” “I answered that I would field corn,” recalls Natalya Alexandrovna. - Vasya then: “I was shocked. My heart stopped." As soon as I heard it, I sat down with a hoe in my hand in the field. I don’t know how long I sat there. I cried and couldn't stop. When she calmed down, she said: “So it’s too early for you to die, son.”
In Dimitrov, Vasily’s burned skin was cut out and the wound was bandaged. A few days later he was transferred to the Dnepropetrovsk hospital, where he was given a referral for treatment to Kyiv. At the Kiev military hospital he underwent skin graft surgery. A large scar on his leg reminds him of an electric shock.
“The first weeks after the operation I walked on crutches. My leg hurt so much, even painkillers didn’t help,” says Vasily. “After looking at guys like me, but without legs and arms, I realized that I was lucky. Although I had to undergo treatment almost all summer, and then also undergo rehabilitation in Irpen, Kyiv region.
— We are very proud of Vasya. He is so young, and already has a diploma “For conscientious performance of military duty,” a medal “War Veteran” and a badge “For exemplary military service.”
His 5-year-old sister Dasha is especially proud of Vasya. While he was in the east, she often said: “Vasya is protecting me,” and when he returned home, she did not leave his side. She adores her older brother,” Natalya Alexandrovna smiles. - I pray for the children every day. Vasya has been through so much that he still cannot sleep peacefully.
Almost every night he pushes the walls, all his hands are knocked down. And sometimes he jumps up in the middle of the night and moves furniture - barricading himself. We hope this will pass with time...
“I have already returned to my normal life,” adds Vasily. — I work as a tractor driver at a local agricultural enterprise. Spring is coming, there will be a lot of work. I’m only glad of this - when I’m busy, I forget about the headache and everything that I had to go through.
Charging a capacitor is not a tricky matter.
Try charging the transformer!
(c) Petka-4
Recently, various
high-voltage and at the same time compact devices: piezo lighters,
shockers, plasma balls and other toys. To be honest, I myself have long
I wanted to buy myself one of these “balls”, it’s too beautiful, but expensive.
In short, I got tired of drooling and decided - why am I worse than others?
And now I'll tell you how to make some yourself
High Voltage (hereinafter referred to as HV) device. And don't let the lack bother you
(or absence =)) of gray matter in the container opposite your monitor,
Even a child can do all this.
First, a little history. It all started at the end
XIX century, when one dude named Nikola Tesla got tired of charging the battery on his laptop. So I had to
him to figure out how to transmit energy over a distance without wires. And after all
came up with it! Eyewitnesses said that near his laboratory sparkled
lightning and everything glowed, and at a distance of several dozen
miles, the receiving device powered several rather sickly lamps without visible
source of energy. Then he invented a device that draws energy
"out of nowhere", connected it to an electric car and drove around the city
a whole week. But people used to be evil and, no one knows why, they admitted
genius psycho. By the way, what is now running through the wires is precisely
alternating current with relatively low losses, we owe it to him.
All that remains from his experiments is the Tesla transformer,
a device that increases voltage thousands of times based on resonance.
So, let's start assembling this transformer, just not the way it is
there should be, but a simplified version of it. The point is that in all
In normal transformer designs, you have to wind a lot of
reel of approx. 800 turns of thin wire. Do you need it? Me too!
And if so, then quickly run to the trash heap or to the market and rip out the old
TV/buy TVS (High-Voltage Linear Transformer, further
Strochnik). It consists of two coils, one of which is in plastic
insulation, the second multilayer. It costs 100-200 rubles. Almost any one is suitable
model, but the larger the size, the better :). Just make sure that
there aren't any on it foreign bodies(variable resistors and other
canoes, only 2 coils), otherwise it will not fit. Got it? Now
Divide the ferrite core into two U-shaped parts. Their places
The connections are located under the coils and are glued together with resin.
Disconnected - remove and throw away the primary coil (which is in
plastic insulation), we don’t need it, but puff, with many
leave the conclusions. Put everything back together as it was (no need to glue it)
and insulate the core in the place where the coil was in several layers
electrical tape. Further, here, on the half where the secondary outputs
wind 5 turns of copper wire 1mm thick, and next to it, on the other
half, 2-3 turns of 0.6mm wire. Just wind both windings turn to turn and into one
side, that is, if the first one was wound clockwise, then the second one should also be wound clockwise
clockwise, and vice versa. Now insulate these windings well. Should
it will turn out something like this:
Now run to the store again for other parts. If
you are going to power the converter from the network, and this best option, can
purchase an electrolytic capacitor for 25-36 volts with a capacity of not
less than 5000 uF. Transistor 2N3055 (30-50 rub.) or another with similar
parameters, preferably two or three. Two resistors: power 2-3 W, one at 27 Ohm,
the other is 240 ohms. Yes, and also, if you don’t mind the money, buy a radiator for the transistor
(you still have to cool it!), because... not from handy means
always makes a good radiator (my tranny overheats
10 seconds after switching on). And buy more heat-conducting paste
(I use "KPT-8"). Here's the diagram:
Transistor designation:
I think you can collect it. If the transistor gets hot and sparks
no, then swap the leads of one of the windings in the circuit (preferably a small one). A normal device usually consumes 2-4 amperes at a voltage of 12V.
Voltage can be supplied from 6 to 24V (some
extreme sportsmen supply 36V), and the output will be 10-25KV, which is approximately equal to an arc of 2-3cm.
Personally, I feed it from charger for batteries, but this
because of my laziness... you better not do that, it's not intended for that.
It's better to install a step-down transformer with a rectifier and a capacitor
parallel (a capacitor is needed to smooth out the alternating current from which
the tranzyuk gets very hot), or you can even power it from the battery -
in short, do what you want, but just KEEP POLARITY, otherwise the transistor will burn out
and perhaps the capacitor will explode!
Here is my assembled converter in a modem box:
“Well, I collected it and what next?” - you ask, and then the most interesting thing -
experiments with HV! First of all, you need to find the secondary terminals at which the voltage
greatest. For most line writers, these are the first and last conclusions,
but for some it is different. For me, for example, these are the first and fifth of
seven available. To do this, solder one wire (with a high voltage
insulation) to the first pin and poke into each contact on the secondary.
Where the arc is longer, solder the second wire there. Now get a normal arc and evaluate the performance of the device (arc length/heating
transistor), to do this, bring the wires close until you get a small blue spark
and start stretching it. If it’s more than 2cm, then it’s good.
Ground one of the wires, for example, on a kitchen stove or battery, and then
For the second one, connect a regular 40-100 W lamp with both of its contacts.
The plasma ball is ready! You can touch it with your hands - you won't
will give an electric shock due to too high a frequency, and the ball will only become brighter
shine. You can try with different lamps, color and intensity
vary depending on the gas and pressure.
Break a 100 W lamp (possibly burnt out) and remove all excess, incl.
glass tube that holds the middle wires, leaving two
extreme electrodes so that there is only air between them. Install
lam... what's left of the lamp is vertical and connect the HV. If
enough power, you will see a beautiful sight called "Staircase
Jacob." The arc will strike at the base, then, under the influence of the heated
air, will rise up to the end of the electrodes, stretching to
limit, it breaks and everything starts again. If it doesn't work, bend it down
electrodes at the base towards each other to reduce the distance.
Ground one wire and connect the second to the foil plate,
For example. Stand on this plate with your bare feet (don't be afraid if you
putting everything together correctly will not kill you, read below why) and take a fluorescent lamp in your hand
light, or some neon. It will glow. This is the most
spectacular experience (especially if you hide the converter and
demonstrate in front of friends). Now why don't you get electrocuted? The fact is that the current is very
high frequency flows the closer to the surface of the conductor, the higher
its frequency. In our case, the frequency is about 30KHz, and this
it is enough for the current to pass only through the upper, dead layer of skin,
where there are no nerve endings and which in any case is not a pity
:). But do not catch the arc from the wire directly to the skin, otherwise you will get a deep burn, because...
the temperature of this arc can reach 6000
degrees. And also, just in case, do not measure the voltage with a digital multimeter, and
don’t measure anything at all! I thought he would survive, because... these bastards wrote "HV" in the corner of the indicator,
but death came instantly (the death of the multimeter, not mine
=). Next, I give free rein to your imagination. If you come up with any new and
interesting experiments with HV, be sure to write to me.
The thirst for life awakened in Zhenya a sociability that had not been noticed in him before
Mommy, scratch my right hand,” Zhenya asked, not suspecting that his hands were amputated on the second day after the accident happened to him. The boy's head is a complete wound, his hands are in bandages, and at first he does not understand what happened.
You don't have a right hand, son. They cut it off,” says Svetlana Evgenievna, holding back tears.
What about the left?
And the left one too, son.
Zhenya has been in the children's department of the capital's burn center at Clinical Hospital N2 for the fifth month now and is now awaiting the next - 17th (!) operation. The exposed skull (the affected area is 20 centimeters in diameter) needs to be “covered” with skin taken from other parts of the boy’s body. And although Zhenya, as they say, no longer has a living place on him, the skin for transplantation will certainly have to be his own: someone else’s will not take root.
Having pushed Zhenya onto the transformer, the friend got scared and ran away
Zhenya's accident happened in early August. He and his friend rode their bikes to the farm, and then it started to rain. The boys decided to hide in a nearby house. Did they know that this house was a transformer booth? For sure. But children are children. Everything that is not locked is open to them. But the booth was not locked. Inside, coming closer to the transformer, the boys threw a wet stick at it: they wondered whether it would throw it away or not? Thrown away! And suddenly, out of the blue, a friend pushed Zhenya in the back - and the boy literally ran into a transformer! Zhenya was shocked by a current of 10,000 volts! What did the boy feel at that moment? Surprisingly, the memory retained many details.
“It became clearer than ever before,” Zhenya conveys his feelings. “Then I felt a strong push, and I was thrown somewhere.” And then I felt very cold. I was lying on the floor, and there was emptiness all around. Only in one corner is my cap, in the other are sneakers. How did they get there? I looked at the ceiling and wanted only one thing - to hide.
It is not known how long Zhenya lay in the transformer booth. Maybe two, maybe three hours. His friend, who was responsible for what happened, did not say anything to anyone: apparently he was scared. Fortunately, fellow villager Evgeniy Velichenko was driving a cow to pasture and noticed Zhenya’s bicycle next to the transformer booth. Suspecting something was wrong, the man rushed inside, where he found the boy. “Just don’t tell your parents,” Zhenya whispered, as if in a dream. “I’ll lie down a little longer and go home.”
The garage where Zhenya’s father, Bogdan Stepanovich, worked was located about five hundred meters from the ill-fated booth, and Evgeny Fedorovich first rushed there. But before Zhenya’s father heard the terrible news, the head of the garage. “Bogdan! Get in the car and let’s go!” - That’s all he said to his subordinate. And a few minutes later the car was already rushing towards the regional center. “Just don’t sleep!” - Zhenya’s father begged him while they were driving to the hospital. Most of all, he was afraid that the child would close his eyes and never open them again.
Zhenya's amputated arms were buried in a rural cemetery
Svetlana Evgenievna saw her son already in the hospital and almost fainted. And then “Amputate the arms”, “Take the limbs from the morgue” - these terrible phrases pierced my consciousness, but it refused to perceive them.
Through tears, Zhenya’s mother tells me how she “died” with her son, when two operating teams simultaneously amputated both of his arms for several hours. How she kissed Zhenya’s hands in the morgue, which they gave her in plastic bags, how she sobbed inconsolably over them
They decided to bury the amputated arms in a rural cemetery, next to the grave of Zhenya’s grandmother. Moreover, this had to be done immediately, since it was hot outside. But how can you leave your son alone? Svetlana Evgenievna called a relative and asked her to put the bag with her hands in the refrigerator, but she refused: she would have been happy to help, but she couldn’t cross the psychological barrier. Fortunately, the car from the village arrived earlier than expected, and the packages were sent with it.
To this day, Svetlana Evgenievna still has Zhenya’s hands before her eyes: on her right hand there was virtually no palm left - it was burnt, on the left hand, on the contrary, it was almost normal, but further, up to the elbow, it was just a solid piece of coal. Zhenya himself even now feels both palms and elbows that are not there. Neurosurgeons say that this indicates the possibility of so-called phantom pain, the “signals” of which are formed in the parts of the brain that control pain sensations. To prevent phantom pain, long-term and expensive treatment is needed.
Svetlana Evgenievna is next to her son all the time. During the first weeks, doctors could not even guarantee that the boy would survive. But one crisis passed, then another - and the doctors breathed a sigh of relief. At some point, Zhenya suddenly said that it would be better if he died. But the thirst for life turned out to be stronger. The boy learned to overcome the pain, and today, talking about his feelings, Zhenya is amazingly calm. He doesn't complain or go into detail. As if it wasn’t his body where flaps of skin were cut off for transplantation, as if islands of healing flesh weren’t turning purple on him. I’m scared to look at this, but how does he feel?
Zhenya can only look at the fluffy toy lion
And Zhenya craves activity. He reads and prays a lot, asking God for a speedy recovery. And Santa Claus under New Year the boy “ordered” health. And the only gifts I wanted to receive were soft toy- definitely a lion. Why a lion? Because this is Zhenya's zodiac sign. Horoscopes say that people born under this sign must control the situation. And Zhenya succeeds in this so far. And the toy lion he received as a gift strengthens his faith in his own strength. There is only one thing that upsets the boy - that he cannot pet Leva, pat him on the back of the neck, or hold him close.
Zhenya receives letters every week from her home village - from classmates and teachers. The kids report: “They have already introduced a twelve-point system in us. And there’s also a club in the village” “Our classy kerivnika Daria Petrivna is gone now - she broke her collarbone and is now at home”, “During class we started working on the style” And Zhenya, out of habit, wants to grab a pen and write an answer. The next second he thinks about how beautiful his handwriting was. And I could tell the kids a lot: how I went to the festive Khreshchatyk with my parents, how big and beautiful the Christmas tree was in the capital, how they took pictures near it with the real Snow Maiden and Santa Claus But Zhenya cannot write. Mom reports the news to her grandmother on the phone, and she tells it to her fellow villagers.
Zhenya is drawn home, to Kotsyubinchiki, to school, say the boy’s parents. — Most of all, he misses physical education, labor and Christian ethics - he always went to these lessons with pleasure. And the strangest thing is that he desperately lacks communication. Before the accident, it used to be that you couldn’t get a word out of him, but now he’s ready to talk about everything day and night.
Zhenya regularly asks doctors about the specifics of each procedure, and the doctors privately call him “professor.” And he had already told his mother about those moments of his life that she had never hoped to find out about: Zhenya was always eager for pranks, but he never told what he came up with and created. “They didn’t recognize” their granddaughter and grandparents, who came to visit him in Kyiv. The boy chatted incessantly, asking about everything. He also shared his anxiety: I used to dream of following in my father’s footsteps - becoming a driver or tractor driver, but now without arms - how?
The parents promised to buy prosthetics, but Zhenya knows that they are very expensive, and the family has no money. And the treatment would have been much more difficult if not for the help of the People’s Deputy of Ukraine Rostislav Schiller. The 7,000 hryvnia that he gave the boy for treatment is a fantastic amount for the Klopotyuks, and they thank God that they “got” such a sensitive person. The Klopotyuk family and fellow villagers did not remain indifferent to the misfortune: they donated as much as they could to Zhenya “to the hospital.” Financial support was provided by both the district and all village councils in the district.
The Klopotyuks hoped to get insurance for their son (this summer, when he was vacationing in a sanatorium, Zhenya was insured), but a problem arose. The prosecutor's office requested a certificate from the local RES (district power grid). And they answered that RES had nothing to do with Zhenya’s injury: they say, the booth was closed, and if the boy broke the lock, then no one is to blame. This is the story.
The management of the Distribution Zone is not yet willing to take responsibility for what happened.
But Svetlana Evgenievna and Bogdan Stepanovich are immensely grateful to the doctors. Ternopil and Kyiv doctors Vladimir Bigunyak, Petr Komar, Ivan Murovany, Nikolai Povstyany, Sergei Staskevich and others have done and continue to do everything possible and even impossible so that the boy can sit at his desk again next September. But what will it be like for him to study?
Functional changes in Zhenya’s brain that arose as a result of injury and manifested in an increase in the child’s contact ability allow us to hope that the boy will be socially adapted, says Georgiy Koverkov, head of the department of urgent pediatric neurosurgery at the Institute of Neurosurgery of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine. - However, for this, the boy needs full-fledged functional, and not “cosmetic” prostheses - “new” hands, thanks to which he could be able to serve himself and realize himself in some profession.
The head of the burn department of the Kyiv City Burn Center of Clinical Hospital N2, where Zhenya is currently being treated, Lyudmila Sochienkova, shares the same opinion. For the social and psychological rehabilitation of a boy, she believes, it is necessary, above all, the sensitive attitude of others and the help of a professional psychologist. But, unfortunately, a psychologist in public hospitals is not yet included in the staffing table. And Zhenya needs him so much! After all, constructive changes in the child’s psyche - love of life, sociability, openness, positive emotions - are nothing more than the result of the attention and kind attitude towards the boy of those who were nearby in difficult moments of his life.
P.S. When the material was already prepared for printing, I managed to get through to Chortkiv Distribution Zone. Its chief engineer, Kazimir Bezpalko, claims that there was a lock on the door of the transformer booth, but the children tore it off, wanting to get inside. For what? In search of metal, of course! The fact that this cannot be done, according to Kazimir Mikhailovich, should have been explained to children at school and at home.
When we applied to the RES for a certificate, they told us so too,” Svetlana Evgenievna sighed. “But the whole village knows that the booth has been unlocked for several years now.”
I would like to hope that the local prosecutor's office will figure out why the accident actually happened.
Photo: from the site sob.ru
A seven-year-old resident of the Chinese province of Sichuan was born wearing a shirt - a bare high-voltage wire fell on the boy, but the child miraculously survived, Vesti.Ru reports.
A little boy named He Haoyang was playing under a high-voltage power line. Suddenly one of the wires broke and fell right on him. After a powerful electric shock with a voltage of 10 thousand volts, the boy stood on his feet and even ran several meters away from the place where the wire fell.
The victim was quickly taken to the hospital. The surprise of the doctors knew no bounds. The child only received burns on his hands! Doctors did not find any damage to the brain or internal organs that is usual in such cases.
It remains a mystery how the boy managed to survive. After all, for several meters in the area where the wire fell, all the earth was scorched.
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Comments
(total comments: 5)Wrote: My heart hurts.
There was an electric shock of 10,000 volts in the transformer box. There was a small booth on 2 floors, 5m long and 3m wide, the first floor was de-energized and the second floor was energized. We decided to remove the copper switches... There were 2 transformers, on the first floor they also removed everything, began to go up to the second floor, I decided to scratch some plate with a wrench, the key melted and a fragment flew into pieces, hit me in the chest, I touched everything, sparks crackling in my eyes, tinnitus, First he fell on his knees, then on his back, began to raise his arm, never rose, and passed out for about 7 minutes. When I recovered, my head was spinning and everything hurt. Then I was in the hospital for 2 weeks....
Posted by: Larisa
+ at the city substation they were painting a transformer, there was an order that it was turned off, but due to the negligence of the dispatchers it turned on. I was shocked by 10 thousand volts, my health is poor with a great deterioration in the heart area.
Posted by: Laguts
When I was about ten years old, in a transformer substation I touched the incoming cable with my hand, as it turned out ten thousand volts passed through it, all of them passed through me, I also remained standing, there were wounds on my hand with charred edges, not too significant. I returned home on my own and felt fine, although I was very scared. Until then, I was not afraid to pick up a 220 wire. I think it all depends on the individual resistance of the body, etc. Some other factors, the humidity of the surface of the soil, shoes, the presence of wounds on the surface of the body, the level of dry skin are of considerable importance.
Posted by: KASS
According to friends who understand electricity, yesterday I received an electric shock of approximately 10,000 volts (another 63A is indicated at the substation located not far from this place). I hooked an 8m fishing rod onto the wires at the top, I was electrocuted, I got a burn on my right arm and left leg, it knocked me down, I felt like I was being twisted all over, but I didn’t lose consciousness. I feel fine, but my muscles hurt a lot - from my neck to my chest. Today I checked with a cardiologist - everything is fine. COMPLETELY OK! Only the muscles of the arms, neck and chest hurt a lot! So it’s not just Chinese boys who are lucky!
10,000 VOLT INSTEAD OF BAITED
Every year in the emergency department of the Burn Center of the Research Institute of Emergency Medicine named after. N.V. Sklifosovsky ends up with up to three thousand people. The sad palm is occupied by patients after “communication” with fire. In second place are those who were scalded with boiling water, in third place are chemical burns. And only 5% of the total number are people with lesions electric shock. The head of the Burn Center, Professor Sergei SMIRNOV, talks about what is behind this figure in a conversation with a correspondent:
This FIGURE is not constant. In winter, the number of electrocuted people is always smaller, but with the onset of summer, a real disaster begins: the skin sweats, thunderstorms thunder, electricians are too lazy to put on protective suits due to the heat, and in addition, the summer season opens, when everyone is “his own electrician.”
There is a common belief that electricians develop a special immunity, and electricity is not dangerous for them.
This is true for low voltage current, but as for high voltage, it is electricians who make up the vast majority of our critically ill patients. Please, a case from practice. The mechanic stood on a three-meter stand, repairing the transformer. The stand began to shake, and the technician, trying to maintain his balance, grabbed the 6,000-volt wire with his hand. Another, squatting, connected a 350 V wire AC and closed the circuit on himself.
What about the safety rules?
Our statistics say that 75% of electrical injuries occur at work due to non-compliance with safety regulations. This includes trolleybus drivers who, with their bare hands, straighten rods that have come off wires (and this is 550 V), and workers who drag energized transformers. There are many cases at a construction site when the boom of a construction crane accidentally touches electrical wires: the current spreads through all metal parts of the crane and hits workers who are removing or hanging the load. Almost none of them return to construction after this: some develop a fear of electricity, while others suffer greatly from the vestibular apparatus after the defeat. Many become disabled.
Let's move away from production. The remaining 25% probably consists of everyday episodes.
Of course, there are accidents from which no one is immune. At night, two women were walking along the road and stepped into a puddle in which lay the end of a broken wire. The current passed through the lower loop - it entered through one leg and exited through the other. The same thing can happen if you walk through a wet field during a thunderstorm.
Long-term observations show that the lower leg-to-leg loop occurs the least often and is considered the least dangerous. Most often it goes to the hands (top loop). And the most dangerous is considered to be a full loop (both arms, both legs), since in this case the current necessarily passes through the brain and heart.
Teenagers riding on the roofs of electric trains add to the sad list of victims. They usually sit on a motor carriage and consider themselves safe because they do not touch the wires. But the head is so close to the high-voltage voltage (3000 V) that an electric arc occurs: electrons from the wire jump to a nearby conductor - to the head.
You can also suffer from an arc during a thunderstorm. A lightning strike and a person almost immediately loses consciousness. Some, upon coming to their senses, feel dizzy, weak, and drowsy. With such symptoms, few people think of seeing a doctor. Meanwhile, the insidiousness of electrical trauma lies in the fact that it does not have any special signs and upon external examination it does not manifest itself in any way; but anyone who has been electrocuted needs immediate consultation with a specialist.
What is the difference between trauma and burn?
When they say that a person was killed by an electric current of five or ten thousand volts, this means that death occurred from trauma. Electrical trauma damages the entire body. Example: a person grabs high-voltage wires with both hands, causing damage to the heart, nervous system and skin. Electrical injury in pure form Cardiologists are involved. But trauma and burns most often occur together.
An electric burn is the result of a local effect of current on tissue, that is, it affects only part of the body. Marks remain at the current entry and exit points. If the marks are located close (for example, a person touches the wire with his shoulder and forearm), then an electrical burn occurs on the skin, tissue, muscles, and bones.
Burns are treated in the surgical department. As a surgeon, I can say that very often it is necessary to perform mutilation operations, that is, amputation of limbs or their segments.
As far as I know, recently the number of victims of electrical injuries has been increasing. What is this connected with?
The explanation lies in the economic field. In the last ten years, the population has become so impoverished that people are climbing into transformer boxes and power lines to extract non-ferrous metals and high-voltage wires and sell them. And this kind of “business” is not done by stupid teenagers, but by fully grown, mature people.
In recent years, “electric poachers” have been increasingly arriving at our center. For fishing, they choose a lake over which a power line passes. They take their wire, throw one end onto the line, and the other into the water. Of course, all living things in the water die immediately. But there are times when a naughty wire, instead of falling into the water, overtakes the poacher himself.
Are there cases when electrical injuries go away without consequences?
There are. Many patients come to us with minor injuries, without complaints and without any “findings” in the heart or other organs.
But if we're talking about In serious cases, even after several years, persistent disorders of the nervous system remain. And in addition, after an electric shock, the pain of a stomach ulcer intensifies, radiculitis worsens, and long-healed fractures begin to hurt. But current not only intensifies those diseases that existed before, it can become a trigger for epilepsy and schizophrenia. Provided that before that they were in a hidden state.
First aid
It would be GOOD, of course, if there was a doctor near the victim at the time of the electric shock. But...
if you are able to move after an electric shock, immediately go to the nearest hospital or medical center;
if someone is working with electrical wiring in your presence, try not to leave him unattended: in the moment of electric shock, he will not be able to call for help or simply scream to attract attention;
a person exposed to voltage below 380 volts literally sticks to the current source and is unable to free himself. This can happen for two reasons. First: out of confusion, he cannot figure out what he is doing. Second: contact with electricity can cause him to lose consciousness. Those around you should immediately open the circuit - unplug the cord from the outlet or press the switch. But if this is impossible, it is necessary to knock the wire out of the person’s hands with a stick, stool or other non-conductive object, or, with the same stool, push him away from the wire. You can simply push with your foot - provided that the shoes do not conduct current;
practice shows that after contact with current a person is most often unconscious. Therefore, the first thing the victim needs is mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration. To do this, you need to put it down, throw back your head and push your lower jaw forward. Pinch your nose, put a handkerchief on your mouth and begin to inhale air through it - 3-4 breaths, and press on your chest, and so on until a pulse appears. It is also advisable to check his pupils: as long as they remain narrow, there is hope of bringing the person back to life.
