Can fallen electricity wires cause a fire?

Question

Can fallen electricity wires cause a fire?

Answer 1

You'd better believe it.

Also you don't have to touch them to get hurt.

If the protection (like fuse) is not just right, the wires can be putting electricity into the ground (fault current).  This can be quite high. This means that there can be significant voltage drop across the ground you are standing on. The wider you are in the direction the current goes, the more voltage. For example in such conditions, you can find some horses in the adjacent field dead.  The ones facing the fault die as the voltage between front legs & back legs its too great & the ones facing the other way can get away with it as horses are longer than they are wide.

In the same way the fault current can sometime go down fences, eg wire fences, as this is lower resistance than the ground.  When this happens sometimes the wire gets hot, after all its not designed for power, & the fence posts can catch fire.  This can happen for even small faults if you get it just right.

Yes, you likely have not seen this, but it is possible & does happen, especially when you have long small capacity lines: eg low power capacity lines feeding small loads in the countriside.  Here setting the protection to detect faults is difficult as the line itself & load limits the current.

Under normal conditions protection (like fuses) turns fallen wires off & there is minimal risk of fire.  By the way, such protection often automatically recloses, tries to turn the power on again a few times (eg 3) just to see if the fault cleared itself, eg burnt away. So if you find a downed line that is obviously not live DO NOT treat it as dead, as it might just reclose & liven up again on you.

Answer 2

Yes. A broken line can arch and the temperature of the electricity coming out of the line is hotter than the surface of the sun.  This is more than enough to start a fire.

Answer 3

yes, and they can kill you also.

Answer 4

sure it does

Answer 5

they are insulated, but maybe the ends might cause a short and the spark can ignite a flame