
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 21, 1993                   TAG: 9307210257
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LEIGH ALLEN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

HOT WIRE CITED IN FALL ON ROOF

A co-worker of a 24-year-old Roanoke man who may have been shocked by an uninsulated power line Tuesday afternoon said they both knew that the wire was hot, but didn't take steps to have the power turned off.

"He didn't think it was gonna get him, just like all the rest of us have thought over the years," Cecil Buchanan said. "He thought he could work around it."

Buchanan said Donnie Carver, 24, was repairing the side of a house on Rorer Avenue Southwest when he brushed up against the 220-volt wire. The jolt knocked him off his ladder and onto the roof of the house's front porch, about six feet below.

Buchanan, who was standing in the front yard, said he heard Carver scream and then hit the roof. Buchanan said Carver already was unconscious when he scrambled up the ladder to him.

Carver was at Roanoke Memorial Hospital Tuesday night.

An Appalachian Power Co. employee who arrived at the scene while Carver was being lowered off the roof by paramedics said the line should have been covered.

"I can see that it's bare," he said. "What happened to the insulation, I have no idea."

Victoria Ratcliff, a spokeswoman for Apco, said the company was investigating the accident but held out the possibility that Carver, who was hired to work on the house, simply may have fallen off his ladder without having been shocked.>

by CNB