Abstract: An employee was rigging a two-point suspension scaffold on the side of a stairway in a parking garage so that he could apply an exterior coating to the structure. He had plugged an extension cord set into a 120-volt receptacle outlet located on the fifth floor and had routed it through the stairway up to the sixth, or top, floor. He lowered some of the cord over the side of the garage to provide slack for the electric motor for the scaffold, which needed to descend the entire height of the garage. A 69-kilovolt overhead power line was located next to the sixth floor level, about 3.8 meters from the structure. When the employee dropped the cord, it contacted the power line. This energized the entire scaffold system, including its rigging, and melted one of the two supporting wire ropes before the circuit protection opened the line. The employee, who was not in contact with any portion of the scaffold, apparently received an electric shock through the cord. He also sustained burns and was treated at a medical center and released.