Ameren Corporation
Failure to report damaged customer equipment, disregarded tag out order and re-energized premises causing substantial damage

I called Ameren to report one leg of our three phase service was not working. Told Ameren that I would not be back on the premises until the next day and to inform me if the problem could be in my equipment. Ameren's safety booklet warn people to inspect a reason why a fuse blows out before putting another fuse in. A few hours after I left an Ameren employee came to the premises. Found a fuse on the high line coming into the building had blown. Rather than contacting me so I could inspect my switch gear. The Ameren employee tried to put in a new fuse, which blew out causing explosions in the building and smoke to come out of the weatherhead. The Ameren employee disconnected service and turned in an order to not hook up (tagged out). Ameren failed to notify me that this Ameren employee had been there, what had happened and he had tagged out our service. Later that day all of the electric service in the neighborhood went out. I could only assume the problem with our service was related to the outage (3000 customers). Late in the following day the service was back on in the neighborhood. But our three phase had not been restored. Since there were utility trucks at just about every corner I figured they would get to us eventually. After two more days I called Ameren and told them we still did not have any three phase. A few hours later an Ameren employee showed up. When he raised himself up to the transformer and high line he told me that all of the fuses where removed. I asked what could have caused the fuses blow to which he replied that they had a lot of problems down the street that probably blew out the fuses. When The Ameren employee put the first two fuses in everything was ok, but as soon as he put the third fuse in there was an explosion in the building and thick black smoke started to billow out of the weather head. I ran into the building and found black smoke billowing out of the switch-gear cabinet and quickly filling the building. When the smoke cleared out enough to get to the switch-gear I found it burned up with puddles of melted copper around it and three of the switch trays blown completely out of the cabinet. Ameren has never explained to me why I was not informed about what happened when the first Ameren employee came out nor why the tag out order was ignored. It was only by coincidence that he stopped by to talk to another Ameren employee that I met him. He told me what had happened the day he was at the premises and told me about the fuse he put in and how it blew out. He said he heard electrical explosions in the building and saw smoke coming out of the weatherhead. When I told him that I had not been informed of this event and showed him the damage to my equipment he seemed flabbergasted. He told me he had turned in a report of dangerous equipment at the location and to not hook up. It is my understanding that once a service has been locked out that it cannot be hooked up until it has been inspected and signed off by an inspector from the city. Ameren states that they are not responsible for damage caused by electrical variations. But by hooking it up repeatedly they caused much more severe damage. What may have been a few hundred dollars or so turned into over $30,000 in damage and nine weeks of lost revenue. Ameren's only response has been that I had bad equipment and the repeated energizing had nothing to do with the severity of damage. When I asked them about the repeated energizing and their failure to notify me of the first employees experience they said they had no procedures for a situation like that. Ameren's only reply has been that they are not responsible for variations in the electricity and the warning from their employee about dangerous equipment and being tagged out is not relevant. The attorneys I have talked to say there is not enough money involved to make it worthwhile. I will gladly talk to any attorney who might be interested. I

Company: Ameren Corporation
Country: USA

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