Three People Killed While Erecting Ham Antenna

[ARRL]

At approximately 8:40 PM on Monday, October 12, a man, woman and their 15 year old son were killed while trying to erect a 50 foot vertical antenna at the home of the man's mother, Barbara Tenn, KJ4KFF, in Palm Bay, Florida. The deceased were not licensed amateurs.



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[Drifter]

At approximately 8:40 PM on Monday, October 12, a man, woman and their 15 year old son were killed while trying to erect a 50 foot vertical antenna at the home of the man's mother, Barbara Tenn, KJ4KFF, in Palm Bay, Florida. The deceased were not licensed amateurs.



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Terrible situation.

 

[TonyV225]

My wife and I were talking about this and agreed what a tragedy but yet STUPID as in the choices that were made that day My heart goes out to the 17 year old that watched it happen and to the couples daughter who now lost a MOMMY DADDY AND BROTHER ALL IN ONE ACCIDENT.

 

[KD8LWX]

I posted this on QRZ, but I will post it here also.

It is very sad.

The Tech manual has rules about staying away from power lines.
The General manual has rules about staying away from power lines.
So why do we loose a few hams every year to this? It is not ignorance, because they should know what happens when you get too close to power lines. Is it just stupidity?

 

[C2]

It is very sad.

Hard to know the rules when you have not been trained. The deceased were not licensed, AFAIK.

 

[TonyV225]

I dont think its even a case of knowing rules rules are for children and learning this is a common sense thing. If you never hadled a gun and with knowing what they can do are you going to load it cock it and stare down the barrel?? I would think not even if one never handled a gun they know what its capable of. As I said poor decisions.

 

[kd7eir]

This is just a sad tragedy. All that we can hope for is that somehow this will serve as ANOTHER WARNING of the dangers of electrical wires, and hopefully someone that reads about this will be prevented from coming into harm.

 

[C2]

not everyone really knows about or understands the dangers of HV power lines.

At some point in my life, I "learned" that those HV lines carry thousands of volts and what they could do, but it was NOT intuitive...