• 3 days ago
A window cleaner severely injured when he was struck by 33,000-volts is now able to "shuffle" around the house - as his family call for a change in the law.

Dad-of-three Jason Knight, 35, suffered a near-death incident and lost his left forearm and several toes.

Electricity jumped about 2 meters (6.6ft) from a power cable to his cleaning pole.

Jason, of Westbury, Wiltshire, was on the final window of a regular customer's house when he was electrocuted on April 6.

His loved ones are now demanding for a change of law to stop this from happening to someone else.

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Transcript
00:00I'm Jason Knight. My name's John Knight, I'm Jason's father.
00:04On the 6th of April, I was going out to do a gutter job and a window job.
00:10I'd done the gutters, I move on to cleaning the windows.
00:13On the very last window, I can remember coming off the window, bringing my pole down and then waking up.
00:25I was very confused, not knowing who I was, where I was, what I was doing.
00:32I tried to sit up and it took me about 10 minutes to jog my memory of what I was doing.
00:43I could see my water fed pole brush in front of me and I realised that I was cleaning windows.
00:50So, as you can imagine, very confused. I tried to stand up but I fell straight back down again.
00:56It was only when I looked down at my legs that I knew that I was in a lot of trouble.
01:02I tried to crawl to the nearest wall in the garden. This is the conservatory wall.
01:11I sat there and I tried to work out what happened. At this time, I didn't have a clue.
01:20Only when I looked down at my hand, I realised that my hand was black.
01:26I couldn't move it, it was like that. I couldn't move it at all, I couldn't feel it.
01:33I was very drowsy and I can distinctly remember looking at a plant in the garden and thinking that I was going to die.
01:42I had all these thoughts going through my head, you know, your family and stuff like that.
01:47Then the customer came out and she saw me. I remember her saying to me, do you need an ambulance?
01:57I must have just mumbled yes.
01:59I can remember the paramedics waking me up and they were cutting the clothes off of me at the time to see how much damage and injury I had.
02:09They were trying to work out what happened. I can remember they asked me a question, did I use any chemicals on the van?
02:17Because they could notice that I had burns on my face, obviously my hand was burnt, my shoes had been blown off and my toes were burnt.
02:29They looked up and they realised that I had got electrocuted. I got electrocuted by 33,000 volts.
02:34They instantly called an air ambulance. By now they had put me under, put me to sleep basically.
02:45When I come back round, I was being trollied down to theatre.
02:50I had my wife next to me and I had my dad next to me.
02:55I can remember looking up to my dad and saying, I'm still very confused at this time, but I said to him, I'm going to be okay, I'm going to be okay.
03:07My dad said, you're going to be okay son.
03:10I woke up three and a half days later, they put me in a coma for three and a half days.
03:16I woke up and there was a board in front of me saying, hi Jason, you're at Southgate Hospital, you're okay and your family is with you.
03:27We're explaining everything when you come round.
03:30Unfortunately I've lost my hand, part of my arm as well, due to the electrocution.
03:39It burnt a lot of it, so it lost the blood flow, so they had to remove it unfortunately.
03:45This is not an isolated incident. People are being electrocuted using water fed poles.
03:51The problem with water fed poles is they're normally made out of carbon fibre, which is highly conductive.
03:59What manufacturers are doing is putting a warning label and a leaflet of some description in with the water fed pole.
04:07Basically explaining that don't use this around power lines.
04:11The common problem, not only in this country, but all around the world, is people are extending the poles, doing the job, and then they're coming in close contact.
04:23They don't have to touch the cable. Everyone seems to think that these conductors, you have to touch them.
04:29We believe Jason's pole was about two metres away when the electric discharged from the cable and then down through Jason's arm on the uninsulated section of the pole he was using.
04:41I know from the surgeon that if the second section of the pole that Jason was using had been insulated, then this incident wouldn't have happened.
04:51I also am led to believe that the electrocutions where people have died in this country, they would not have perished if they'd been using an insulated water fed pole.
05:03There is a British standard out there that already exists which will fit the bill, and that's British Standard 8020.
05:13We are pushing and asking the industry to please consider making these poles to this standard of the first two sections.
05:22Jason's a lucky one. He's alive.
05:25And we're hoping that taking the story, educating people as much as we can, spreading the word that these type of power cables used in these poles can jump.

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