Safety First

As early as 1990, when a seven-year-old boy was electrocuted in St. Louis, community officials have been aware of the extreme safety issues surrounding service access holes. The St. Louis boy, who died after touching the insulated wires inside a street-light pole, alerted citizens to a chilling fact: hundreds of exposed wires, many of them live, exist in nearly every major U.S. city.

Though that incident happened more than a decade ago, cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit continue to address uncovered access holes. The City of Philadelphia Streets Department issued a 1998 report in which it identified exposed wires not only in its street lights and traffic signals, but also in field lights at recreation centers. Chicago's Streets and Sanitation Department has started an increased awareness campaign to address reports that similar problems existed in school ground street lights.

Less than a year ago, Detroit was forced to shut down about 600 street lights after discovering that wires had been ripped out of at least 100 of them. Many of the exposed wires were charged with enough power to kill.

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