Reply to post:

I worked in a building that the electricity board accidently connected 2 phases across what should have been live/neutral and took out a fair chunk of the building. We spent most of the afternoon wandering up and down Edgware Rd buying up bulbs and replacements for those odd fuses that no one ever stocks. (most of the kit survived with just a blown fuse)

I also worked in a building where the old PBX room had been partially converted to a server room now that 'modern' technology had shrunk the many racks of clockwork to a couple of cabinets. They had installed a cabinet of servers and a rack containing a mux and modems for remote access. To this had been added a cabinet full of fibre optic mux gear mainly for voice traffic and a final rack of odds and ends. As the room had been a PBX room the main power had been 50V DC, they had plugged the server cabinet into the first available mains socket and then the mux cabinet into the 1st... the fibre cabinet into the 2nd, 4th into the 3rd... all connected to a single 13A rubber socket on the end of a lead disappearing through a hole in the wall! Needless to say the rubber socket was red hot and had scorched a mark on the floor (luckily tiled). The electricians finally grudgingly agreed to forego the usual '2 working days' attendance (well it had probably been working for a couple of years like that... what does another couple of days scorching the floor matter)