Electrical safety advocates are urging people to be careful during any summer fun or home-improvement projects.
Ontario has seen a sharp rise in power line contacts involving members of the public in recent years, especially during the height of the pandemic.
Patrick Falzon, a power line safety specialist with Ontario’s Electrical Safety Authority (ESA), says the province saw an average of 16 to 20 such incidents reported each year from 2012 to 2018.
But those numbers have since been trending much higher.
“In 2019, we had 75 power line contacts,” said Falzon, citing data that includes both near-misses and incidents in which people have been hurt.
That number went up to 82
