I wonder how often these occur. When I was in my early 20s a buddy and I were about 18 hours in to a drive to Buena Vista, CO from Portland, OR, when a transformer exploded somewhere near us in a huge canyon. We thought it was noiseless nucleur explosion - the light was searingly bright and seemed to engulf everything. I just happened to call another friend (from a pay phone!) who had experienced the same thing. Even in my sleep deprived state it is to-this-day one of the most visceral moments of my life.
This happened to me once on a small street in Massachusetts.
I was driving at night and suddenly my heart jumped as a helicopter suddenly shined its bright spotlight straight at my car, like in the movies. It was hovering 20 feet off the ground about 200 feet away, and pointing straight at me.
After a second or two I realised the ‘helicopter’ was just my brain’s initial attempt to interpret what I was seeing. There was no helicopter, it was a transformer at the top of a pole that exploded.
The “spotlight” was not focused in any one direction but shining in all directions equally, so it was damn bright.
You hardly ever see anything so bright, which was why the “spotlight” thing made sense to my brain at first. And “helicopter” since it was up in the air.
It stayed lit for only a couple seconds and then the street plunged into darkness, all street lights off, as a few errant will-o-wisps sputtered out of the remains of the transformer.
I had this happen while working from home in SF. My office window faces the backyard and a transformer in front of my neighbors house went up.
No light show that I could see as it was early afternoon, but holy crap did the noise ever scare me. The window was open and it made this incredibly loud Bzzzzzz for about 10 seconds, then a small explosion. Took my brain about 20 seconds to connect the dots. See the smoking transformer helped.
I work on medium-sized power electric systems (mostly in the few hundred kW-range), and have a strong aversion to being anywhere near our systems during first power-up.
Hence, I always carry a couple of pushbuttons and some 15m of cable in my toolkit - wiring them in parallel with the buttons normally starting the show, retreating, saying a brief prayer to the patron saint of electricians and starting up.
Did a system on a ship a few years ago, all set, me sitting in the corridor outside the drive suite and pressing the button closing the main contactor, only to be greeted by the tell-tale sound of a door being blown off its hinges and an arc forming. Oh.
Cue incredible light show on the bulkhead opposite the drive suite door; after a second of this, I come to my senses and figure the so-called arc safe contactor -well- isn't.
I push the button jury-rigged to cut power at the generator end, only to have nothing whatsoever happen. Oh oh.
Still arcing. I key my VHF to alert the engine room to kill the generator set and alert them to the fire getting started in the drive suite, only to be told in no uncertain terms to keep quiet as they were busy with an emergency.
Seconds later, ship goes black (and eerily quiet!) before the sound of boots running down the corridor as the emergency lights kick in.
I've never felt as relieved as I did when the firefighting crew later told me that I'd been most unlucky - a pump starter in the drive suite (not our delivery) had opted out of existence and had sooted down all of my precious kit.
It had blown up the very same moment I tried to start my equipment for the first time - and for a few minutes I was certain I had contributed to taking an investment in the several hundred million dollar range off-hire for however long it took to replace the damaged electronics.
Instead, the crew apologised profusely for having me come all the way to the wrong side of the planet only to see my delivery go up in flames not of my own making.
Priceless.
I'll remember the sound, the light and the smell - not to mention that sinking feeling - to the end of my days, though.
When I was in college, I was leaning on the guy wire of a wooden power pole while chatting with a friend. I was rocking a bit, as I tend to do when standing still, and I noticed that the pole was swaying just a little too. So I tried bouncing the wire some more, and got several inches of sway out of the pole. Neat!
Then there was a loud POP and all the lights on the street went out.
Not sure what happened next, as it seemed like a good time to leave. Moral: don't do that.
I live in an older subdivision that has 18kW transformers on poles every hundred yards or so. We get a blowout once or twice a year during a storm. The arcs are smaller but oh man that 60Hz hum. It’s incredibly loud. Can’t imagine how loud that NYC arc was.
Even a little utility pole transformer can put on quite the show. Years ago, I saw one where the the transformer itself got ~vaporized. And then the arc started walking down the pole. Maybe the pole was old enough that it had some long cracks, that were damp enough to conduct well. Pretty soon, the entire pole was carbonized, and there was arcing all the way from the kV lines to the ground.
After a couple hours, they isolated the circuit, and shut it down.
