People swimming near a dock on July 4 reported feeling a shock in the water at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. They quickly got out of the water and called Catalyst Electric, as reported by LakeExpo.com.
The electrician from Catalyst, a local company, turned off the power to the dock they were swimming by, but it did not resolve the issue. So then he had to go from property to property, asking permission to shut off power to each nearby docks.
The electrician told LakeExpo.com that they were going to call the fire department if they could not obtain permission to enter nearby properties. Ameren has granted local fire districts "trespassing rights," for lack of a better term, in such situations—allowing district personnel to move freely along the shoreline if there is an emergency and the source needs to be identified, LakeExpo.com reported.
The current was found to be coming from a ramp 100 yards away. “It was an abandoned ramp and apparently they didn’t cut the electricity off to it,” Jon Bussey, co-owner of Catalyst Electric, said, noting the ramp was no longer connected to a dock.
According to the report, the dock had been disconnected years ago, but the electric line feeding it had not been disconnected from the main breaker box. Instead, the breaker had been simply turned off and the wire wrapped around the frame of the ramp. During some recent work, that breaker had been turned back on, and the owner estimates it had been on—electrifying the water—for a month.
