Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2003 | 11:21 a.m.
Under a blackish cast-iron lid marked "water," a concrete box holding an electrical conduit had wires reaching toward the lid.
One side of the foot-deep box at Sunset Park was broken, pushing the lid closer to two wires, which both carry 277 volts of electricity.
The box near the tennis courts in the popular park may have been broken after being run over by a truck, county workers said, and it was something to note.
After a fatal electrocution on the Strip and two non-fatal electrocutions connected to electrical boxes, county crews on Monday started checking every electrical box in Clark County.
The woman electrocuted Aug. 16 on the Strip stepped on the metal top of an electrical box that was covered with water. County officials won't speculate on the cause, but one theory is that wires touched the metal top, electrifying the box.
The cumulation of incidents involving the lids on the electric boxes prompted county officials to check the lids on electric boxes along the Strip, some other high-pedestrian traffic roads such as Flamingo and Tropicana, and in all 70 of the county's parks, county spokesman Erik Pappa said.
"There were three (incidents) and you can't ignore that," Pappa said.
County electricians cleared the box in Sunset Park -- the wires were in good shape, the connections were tight and there was still room between the top and the wires.
County crews also cleared roughly 250 other electrical boxes along the Strip and at the park. Overall, the county could have 70,000 boxes, Pappa said. It was unclear how long that would take.
The trouble comes when boxes such as that one sink farther, to the point where the lid pinches the wires on the lip of the conduit. The pressure can wear away at the insulation and leave a bare piece of wire touching the lid, sending electricity into the metal, said Mark Larson, electrical maintenance supervisor for the county Real Property Management Department.
In the past 14 months three people have been injured, one fatally, because of lids that were electrified by exposed wires.
An elderly man was badly bitten by his dog while the dog was being shocked by a lid in Winchester Park in July 2002. The dog survived. Then in April a 9-year-old girl survived a shock from a box lid at Von Tobel Middle School Park, according to county park police reports.
A Kentucky woman died on Aug. 16 after stepping on an electrified lid on the Strip.
County officials wouldn't say on Monday exactly how the wires electrified the metal lids involved in those incidents because of pending or potential litigation. But last week officials said the incident on the Strip may have been caused by water, dirt or debris getting into the box over the years and pushing the wires up to the metal lid.
Pappa said that until media questions late last week, he and other top county officials were not aware of the incident involving the girl at the school park because of a lapse in internal communications.
The recent events have also prompted local municipal governments to make plans to check some of their electrical boxes.
Las Vegas Public Works Director Richard Goecke said he will probably accelerate a lid-replacement program that eventually will switch the remaining 15,000 metal lids with either nonmetal lids, or lids that have a nonmetal coating.
Since the program began in 1996, about 3,000 metal lids have been replaced, and a city worker spent four years mapping where all the boxes are, he said.
"We felt there was a better product out there," Goecke said. "These are mostly in sidewalks and the metal is conducive to electricity."
Goecke said it could cost $1.5 million to buy the replacement lids.
Henderson staff will be checking the boxes around schools and at city parks beginning later this week, a city spokeswoman said.
North Las Vegas is contracting with a private electrical company to inspect the boxes along Lake Mead and Las Vegas boulevards, a city spokeswoman said.
The boxes typically lie flush with the sidewalk or road. Many are marked electric, although Larson said some are marked water, and he said county workers will be checking all such boxes no matter what they are marked.
The boxes are somewhat similar to boxes that a homeowner might have for a yard sprinkler system.
However, those boxes connected to a sprinkler system have far less electricity running through them, said Michael Walker, a field superintendent with A Ronnow Lawn Sprinkler in Las Vegas.
"It would be like sticking your tongue to a 9-volt battery," Walker said.
A sprinkler box typically is a 24-volt system, he said.
The electric boxes next to the tennis courts at Sunset Park have two wires that both have 277 volts flowing through them, Larson said.
County workers checked about 20 electric boxes on the Strip soon after the tourist died, and on Monday two crews of two county workers checked the wires in the rest of the 220 electrical boxes on the Strip between Russell Road and Sahara Avenue on Monday, Pappa said.
Another crew of two workers started checking the boxes at Sunset Park on Monday, too.
With a knowledge of electricity that comes from working with it daily, Larson and his staff use a screwdriver or pliers to pry the metal lids away from the sides of the box and then toss the lid aside.
So long as they are wearing rubber-soled shoes and don't touch anything else that would give electricity a way through them, the workers don't have to worry about whether the lid they are lifting is "hot" with electricity. But if they put a hand on something, such as a light pole, or rest a knee on the ground, and the electricity will flow.
The broken box next to the tennis courts will be replaced, Larson said. The concrete box in another one of the 33 or so electric boxes checked at the park was cracked and will also be replaced, he said.
There might be as many as 200 electric boxes in Sunset Park, the county's busiest park, Larson said.
The boxes that have their lids in plain sight take just a minute or so to check, but the time-consuming problem in Sunset Park is that some of the boxes haven't been touched for decades and are now buried under grass and dirt.
Larson said workers have used metal detectors to find about four or five of the electric boxes.
Larson and Pappa said they don't know how long it could take to check all the boxes in all the parks, or even how many boxes are in all the parks.
The general practice is to have such boxes, which are placed where wires are spliced together, every 200 feet, Larson said.
"The new parks should go faster because we have blue prints of where they put them," Larson said about the electric boxes.
Pappa said the County Commission will be presented with options on how to address the problem during its Sept. 2 meeting.
Whether replacing the metal lids with nonmetal lids is a possible recommendation is still being evaluated, Pappa said.
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