Dalby youngster fronts electrical safety video after horrific electric shock nearly killed him

Jason Daniels, then 17, told his boss he was worried about getting the auger too close to overhead powerlines. His concerns were ignored and he paid the price.

All Jason Daniels remembers of the incident that nearly cost him his life is the excruciating pain and agony of a high voltage electrical current running through his body.

It was all systems go on the farm outside Dalby on October 27, 2017, as people rushed around preparing to load a road train full of grain.

Jason Daniels is featuring in a new electrical safety video after a near-fatal electric shock outside Dalby in 2017.

Mr Daniels, who was 17 at the time, was worried about getting too close to an overhead powerline as he moved an auger and told his boss he thought they should lower the machine.

“He goes ‘no, we don’t have time’ … and that’s when we collided with the overhead power line.

“I remember the ambulance arriving on site and then after that, nothing really.”

Walking into hospital, Mr Daniels’ mother Di was overcome by the sight of her son’s blackened feet, the burns to his body and the smell of charred flesh.

“It took me ages to get over that, the smell of it,” she said.

Jason Daniels is featuring in a new electrical safety video after a near-fatal electric shock outside Dalby in 2017. This is one of his feet after the incident.

Mr Daniels was placed in an induced coma and he was in the intensive care unit in the Royal Brisbane Hospital for two weeks before undergoing nine operations in two months.

He lost four of his toes as a result of the accident and has had several skin grafts, as well as having to learn how to walk again.

Launching a new electrical safety video in Toowoomba yesterday, Mr Daniels stressed the importance of speaking up about safety.

“It is quite confronting that you get to pull your boss up on something when they’re a lot older than I was at the time,” he said.

“I want to warn others about the risks of working near overhead powerlines and get young workers to speak up if they believe the work they are doing is unsafe.”

In the past six years, there have been 52 serious incidents in Queensland involving overhead powerlines and six people have died.

Agricultural, construction and transport workers are most at risk.

Mr Daniels said the hardest part of his recovery was the physio.

And the thing he misses most about the way he was before?

“My toes,” he laughed.