And I'd also say, damned unlucky. I've managed to get my fingers in 230V often enough and am still here to tell the tale.

IMO, not much luck or the lack of luck involved here, they are deaths just waiting to happen without simple safety methods.

You and both likely use the one hand rule and other simple measures to avoid cross heart/critical organ electric shocks.
https://www.vaia.com/en-us/textbook...orking-with-high-power-electric-circuits-it-/

When working with high-power electric circuits, it is advised that whenever possible, you work "one-handed" or "keep one hand in your pocket" Why is this a sensible suggestion?

 

IMO, not much luck or the lack of luck involved here, they are deaths just waiting to happen without simple safety methods.

You and both likely use the one hand rule and other simple measures to avoid cross heart/critical organ electric shocks.
https://www.vaia.com/en-us/textbook...orking-with-high-power-electric-circuits-it-/

When working with high-power electric circuits, it is advised that whenever possible, you work "one-handed" or "keep one hand in your pocket" Why is this a sensible suggestion?

Valueable rule of course. But we won't be able to follow this when two hands are involved. Say, when I am soldering a component to a PCB, right?

 

I believe this is the news story the OP is referring to:-

https://www.observerbd.com/news/531180

One reliable way of avoiding this type of incident in the home is to have the house electrics protected by a Ground Fault Interrupter (or Earth Leakage device), that detects a current imbalance between the supply Live and return Neutral – cutting the supply when such is detected.

Thank you, sir. Yes, this is the news I was referring to. Could you please tell me where to find ground to fault interrupter and where we have to install them?

 

Firstly, depending on what country you are in (you didn't say) does it have a 2-pin or 3-pin plug? If your country doesn't have 2-pin plugs, look at the shape of the cable. If it is flat it is definitely two-core.

Sir, we have 2-pin plugs in most of the appliances. Air conditions, UPS and laptops have 3-pin plugs. Our supply voltage is 220 Volts.

 

Valueable rule of course. But we won't be able to follow this when two hands are involved. Say, when I am soldering a component to a PCB, right?

I would think that normally when soldering a component to a PCB, the component nor the PCB has a live utility line connected to it. If they do have a live utility line connected to it, I'm sure it's for a very good reason.

Using any safety rule requires using just, a little thought, about applicability.

 

I still feel like there's a lot more to this sad story. I believe the sad part - two dead. But the rest is hard to imagine.

 

I still feel like there's a lot more to this sad story. I believe the sad part - two dead. But the rest is hard to imagine.

No harder than this: https://apnews.com/article/texas-floods-missing-hill-country-5044c169b59921b2b4f65a2568c354c0

 

Certainly the news media did not provide any details, both because details do not sell, and because none involved understood any of it. In addition, consider that the news media chooses to sensationalize things as much as possible.

A fair guess is that the poor woman had made a solid connection to both the rice cooker and some other point. Beyond that we are told not one bit. Thus we can not learn anything at all from this piece of bad news.

 

Thank you, sir. Yes, this is the news I was referring to. Could you please tell me where to find ground to fault interrupter and where we have to install them?

Does your fuse box/consumer unit look like this? with DIN-rail mounted MCBs? Are there any that are double-width with a push button on them labelled "T". If so you already have a Residual Current Device/Ground Fault Interruptor and you are OK.

 

IMO, not much luck or the lack of luck involved here, they are deaths just waiting to happen without simple safety methods.

Education and good practice will enable you to avoid the shock in the first place. There is definitely an amount of randomness involved in whether the shock kills, because of the number of factors involved, all the way from the person's susceptibilty to shock, skin resistance, footwear, carpets etc.

 

The Ground Fault Interrupter (or Earth Leakage device) I was referring to is normally integral to the house consumer unit, where the incoming power is split off into the various circuits within the home. Installation of such a device would normally require the work to be undertaken by a skilled electrician.

As an alternative it is possible to protect individual socket outlets, or socket outlets having the protection built-in – but it is much more cost effective to have such protection within the consumer unit rather than at every outlet within the home.

(links below show socket outlet RCD unit, socket outlet with an integral RCD, and a unit of the type fitted within the consumer unit, protecting the whole home)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/17582705...5iI9HlNlnMsEpAI+94NO9ZmJY=|tkp:Bk9SR-L_8_L7ZQ

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/25684107...Ij4g96lgcAi/v7tnmJC6UBmx9F|tkp:Bk9SR-T_8_L7ZQ

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/23520145...M1WFEkYrXbktLZaUT4MJ6ChNJg==|tkp:BFBMhKWV8_tl

 

Education and good practice will enable you to avoid the shock in the first place. There is definitely an amount of randomness involved in whether the shock kills, because of the number of factors involved, all the way from the person's susceptibilty to shock, skin resistance, footwear, carpets etc.

It's the swiss cheese method. It takes a series of random holes from many slices to line up for a death. The things we do from education only need to bias one hole out of alignment to greatly reduce the chances of serious injury or death.

 

Valueable rule of course. But we won't be able to follow this when two hands are involved. Say, when I am soldering a component to a PCB, right?

I wouldn’t expect the hand holding the soldering iron to contact anything conductive, unless you pick it up from the wrong end, something I did exactly once.

 

NONE of the comments seem to address the original incident.
Certainly the news report was intended primarily to produce "shock and fear", by not providing any details at all.
Certainly the accident is a tragedy for those close to the victims, my sympathy to the survivors.
And just as certainly, reporting without any details is irresponsible junk journalism!!

 

Welcome to AAC.

I read through most of the posts answering your question but some of what I say might be redundant so please excuse any repitition.

1. Media reports are notoriously unreliable. They can omit or confuse technical details, but they can even get major aspects of the story completely wrong. Particularly today, where lazy writers will pounce on exciting Internet reports, and people seeking attention will actually fabricate things—including quotes from witnesses and officials—it is important not to take such reports at face value.

The way you described it: "she and the baby were killed as so as she turned it on" raises red flags. This is either an exaggeration or an outright lie. Even 240V will not kill a normal, healthy person at a touch without special circumstances, and to kill the baby as well—this leaves me extremely incredulous.

People do get injured and killed by faulty appliances. Particularly in countries where the safety equipment and best practices needed to render circuits safe when they have faulty elements are absent. 240V will kill you if you give it a chance, but with the proper wiring and gear, it doesn't have much of a chance.

So, it is very likely that this event didn't happen as described, if it happened at all.

2. Your question is a good one, even if the reason you are asking may not be. So, reframing it to eliminate the sensationalism that prompted, then answering is worthwhile.

I live in the US where the electrical code and mandatory inspection goes a long way to making our domestic electrical infrastructure safe. Add in our 120V standard, a much less lethal voltage than the 240V common elsewhere, and you really have to go out of your way here to be injured of killed by your electric service.

That said, it is not always so rosy, and older structures, cost-cutting scoundrels, and incompetent installers—DIY and people paid to do work they are not qualified to take on—can make things much more dangerous. However, in some countries wildly dangerous installations using higher voltages are commonplace and protecting yourself is indeed a practical matter.

The solution is a combination or two things: proper infrastructure and proper behavior. You may or may not be able to influence the former but the latter is entirely in your control.

Let's take a quick look at what causes injury and death in the case of electrocution.

Burns
Contact with sufficiently high levels of current can and will burn skin where the contact is made. This is usually minor and highly restricted in scope, but it hurts and is a warning that much worse could have happened.

Internal Damage
If allowed to remain in contact for long enough, a live conductor will burn the surface but also disrupt internal parts of your body. Ifdoes this by heating and rupturing the small structures that make up your body.

Death
This worst case scenario is almost always going to be the result of a cardiac event.If the circuit that is allowing the current flow is across the heart, its electrical system can be disrupted causing it to stop beating properly or at all.

So what are the conditions that cause any of these things? Fundamentally, you have to make your body part of an electrical circuit so that current will flow through it. This means one part of your body must be in contact with a source of electrical potential of sufficient intensity that it can produce dangerous current to some other part of your body that is in contact with something that is of an opposite potential of sufficient magnitude.

This is usually the live lead of an electrical circuit and "ground", or "earth". This can literally be the earth, or it can be something connected to it, like the floor, or a water pipe, &c. And, for death to result, the circuit must be made through your body in such that is can disrupt the body's own electrical system—usually the heart. If you manage to tough the live and neutral leads of an electrical outlet with two fingers of the same hand, it will hurt but it won't kill you. But, if touch them with a finger of each hand, the circuit will be across your heart and death is a real possibility.

So, what can you do?

First, don't touch anything connected to an electrical outlet or to the mains that appears to be broken in such a way that it's electrical wiring is exposed—particularly bare metal.

Always inspect power leads for damage to the insulation, and for attempts to defeat the earth/ground pin if it is equipped with one. A double insulated appliance doesn't require an earth connection because in theory you are protected by its housing, but if there is an art pin on the lead, and it has been circumvented so the device can be plugged into an outlet lacking one, don't use it.

If you see melting, discoloration, or burning on an outlet don't use it. This is a sign that it is being overloaded and may mean the circuit breaker or fuse is faulty or the wrong value. These devices are there to protect the wiring, not you—at least not directly, but while burning to death in a fire caused by faulty wiring may not be as direct as electrocution, it is still a way to get killed by your electric service,

The devices that are intended to protect you are the RCD/GFCIs that detect a ground fault, that is, current flowing where it should't be (possibly through you!) and interrupt the circuit very quickly. Every outlet in a kitchen or bathroom, or any either place where there may be water where it shouldn't be should be protected by an RCD/GFCI.

Test them regularly, using their test button, or better, buy an outlet tester that includes the test and will also tell you if the outlets are properly wired and have an effective earth.

Another useful tool is an NCV (Non Contact Voltage) tester. This device can be purchased cheaply and can detect when things that shouldn't be "live" are. Never trust it, though as proof of the absence of danger, only the presence. It is not something to stake your life on, there are too many reasons it might not indicate when it should.

There is a lot more I could write, but I have already written too much and very few people will have read this far. I would say the number one way to protect yourself in knowledge, so learn about these things and you will be able to act on principle rather than rules that may or may not be appropriate in your case.

 

Hello,

Read the following pages:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/electric-shock#effects-on-the-body
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-3/ohms-law-again/

It is the current that kills.

Bertus

 

and to kill the baby as well—this leaves me extremely incredulous.

+1

Unless the baby was touching something conductive itself, The current would have to come from contact with the mother, which is just not credible. Current would not flow along the outside of the skin, the resistance is way too high. Electrocution current in a human flows through a thin layer of skin, then in the interior, which has a low resistance (due to presence of electrolytes, I presume).

 

What IS believable is that the person got a bad enough shock that she fell down. THAT did happen to me once, standing barefoot on the asbestos tiled, ground level, concrete floor of our house in south Louisiana. I hit the bare screw of the light switch cover plate of a non-grounded electrical box that had a sharp edge that contacted a live wire. Actually, it felt like it threw me down. That resulted in an instant disconnection from the power. So the shock was only momentary. And I was only 17, quite durable. And my hand was probably wet from just having been washed.
Hitting the floor as hard as I did would have been very bad for a small baby.
AND, OF COURSE, all of the comment by "Y" in post #35 makes sense.