If only Tim had realized he was seconds away from death while watching his co-worker excavate a trench with a backhoe; he would have run away as far as possible. But he had no warning that the machine would sever an underground transmission line and send a fatal surge of electricity through his body.

The 28-year-old utility worker was holding a metal valve key when he was electrocuted near a suburban home. The electrical current actually traveled from the 4,100- volt line, through standing water, to a copper pipe, to an underground valve and then up the metal key […]