(Round Lake, Mn.)—It was a very close call Wednesday afternoon for a man trimming trees just across the Minnesota border northwest of Lake Park, near Round Lake. Lake Park Fire Chief Brandon Ehret tells KUOO news firefighters and paramedics were called to the scene at 71203 350th Avenue in Nobles county, Minnesota around 2:00 p.m…(click here for comment.) “Basically what it was was it got called in as an electrical incident, a boom truck trimming trees…the guy got into the power line and had gotten hurt…supposedly had some electrical burns and the truck was on fire as a result. When we arrived on the scene nobody had been injured. The owner of the truck, the operator of the truck, was safe and sound on the ground and the truck was fully involved about eight feet from a house. We were able to get the fire extinguished before it got the house on fire and able to get the boom component out of the way of the power lines and the electric company showed up and got the wires fixed and the power restored. Basically that was about the extent of it. But nobody had gotten hurt as first initally report.”
Ehret says the man was extremely lucky…(click here for comment.) “He jumped from the truck. He said it got a little, it started to get hot on him and he had to leap off, which is probably the right thing to do. The power line had burned in half and had fallen to the ground he had made contact with by the time we arrived, so, and it blew a fuse up the line a mile or so. We were able to get in and get to the truck pretty easily.”
Ehret says the incident spells out the importance of always knowing the location of power lines before doing any work.
The Lake Park Fire Department was assisted by the Round Lake Fire and Rescue, the Nobles and Dickinson counties Sheriff’s Offices and Federated Rural Electric Association.
Crews were on the scene nearly two hours.
