Abstract: At approximately 1:00 p.m. on August 24, 2001, Employee #1, a lineman, and a coworker, who was serving as a groundsman and as the bucket truck driver, were installing fiber optic cable on utility poles at a height of approximately 24 ft 4 in. The poles also carried energized, 13.6-kilovolt, phase-to-phase, electrical power lines located above where they were working. Employee #1 had finished with the cable anchor point at one utility pole and was ready to move to the next pole. He told his coworker using the bucket-to-truck intercom that he had rotated the boom and work platform of the metal Cable Placer bucket away from the utility pole and was ready to go to the next one. The coworker began to drive slowly, at almost idle speed, along the level, paved street. He was approximately half way between the poles when he noticed that the high voltage line nearest the street was bouncing. The coworker stopped the truck, got out, and saw Employee #1 collapsed in the bucket. He used the ground controls to lower the bucket and removed Employee #1 before radioing for assistance. Employee #1 was transported by ambulance to a hospital emergency room that was two to three blocks away; he was pronounced dead at 2:16 p.m. Subsequent investigation found that at the point in the roadway where electrical current had passed through the rear tires of the truck and into the street, the height of the street-side phase, where Employee #1 apparently contacted the powerline, was approximately 24 ft 9 in. This was only 5 in. above the height of the cable that Employee #1 had been working on at the previous pole.