Sydney cubby house example of shocking electrical safety

A children’s cubby house built around a live power pole is the worst example of unsafe electricity practices around Sydney, with Ausgrid warning people to take more care.

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NSW families are living in potential deathtraps with an electricity safety audit revealing dozens of shocking risks taken by homeowners, including one horrifying example where a children’s cubby house was built around a live power pole.

Power company Ausgrid has released photos of Sydney’s biggest electricity safety fails — including buzzing power cables bundled into a shopping trolley and a power pole chopped down by would-be copper thieves — with experts predicting it is just a matter of time before lives are lost in electrical accidents across the state.

Ausgrid chief operating officer Trevor Armstrong said the deadliest risk was the children’s cubby house, held up by a private power pole at Seaforth on the northern beaches.

An Ausgrid team noticed the play equipment was connected to a live powerline and were forced to cut power to the site in order to make the cubby house safe.

Power was switched off after an Ausgrid crew found this cubby house built around a power pole.

This fallen wire was still live when a member of the public tied it to a lamp post in St Ives.

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“Electricity is not child’s play … the consequences of this could have been devastating and changed a family’s life forever,” Mr Armstrong said.

“These kinds of situations keep me up at night; we can rebuild damaged wires, but we can’t replace human life.

“When it comes to electricity we have to remember, you can’t see it, but it can kill you.”

Another close call on the northern beaches saw the fibreglass shell of a new swimming pool cut in two when the truck carrying it hit overhead power lines at Beacon Hill.

This fibreglass swimming pool came off second best when the truck carrying it hit overhead power lines in Beacon Hill.

A tipper truck driver in the Hunter Valley also narrowly escaped a deadly situation after accidentally raising the vehicle’s tray straight into high voltage power lines hanging overhead in an industrial estate.

Mr Armstrong issued the warning as Ausgrid starts its Electricity Safety Week, putting the naive and the reckless on notice.

“With all that’s going on in the world, it’s easy to see how people can become distracted with other things on their minds … (but) you won’t get a second chance with electricity,” he said.