The blades and a rotor fell off of a wind turbine in North Dakota on March 14, according to this Business Week report. Inspectors say malfunctioning bolts were the problem.
And on Feb. 8 a lighting fixture fell from the ceiling in the heavily traveled Central Artery Tunnel in Boston's Big Dig project. No one was injured by the lighting fixture, but the incident brought back sad memories of the motorist who was killed in 2006 in one of Boston's new Big Dig tunnels when several 4,600-pound concrete panels fell from the ceiling, crushing her car.
No one is certain yet why the 8-foot long, 110-pound lighting fixture fell, but the early speculation is that one or more of the brackets attaching the fixture to the tunnel wall got corroded by salt air, moisture and de-icing solutions. NuArt Lighting, Fullerton, Calif., is the manufacturer of the fixture. A March 16 report at www.boston.com said 95% of the 23,000 lighting fixtures in the Big Dug tunnels inspected by that time were safe. All fixtures will be inspected.
About the Author
Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.