Fire marshal shut down our site in Reno over one extension cord

Three days ago the fire marshal walked our job in Reno and red tagged the whole floor over a single daisy chained extension cord running to a chop saw. I was mad at first because we were two days from drywall and I had six guys standing around with nothing to do. But he walked me through it and showed me the cord was undersized for the saw and had a nick in the jacket, which I never would have caught in a hundred walk throughs. Now I do a cord and panel check every Monday morning before anyone picks up a tool. How do you all keep temporary power from turning into a weekly fight on your jobs?

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karenlee4h ago

Did the marshal end up walking your whole crew through the cord check or just you? We had almost the same thing happen last spring when an inspector killed our deck pour over one chewed up cord feeding a grinder. I was fuming too, but he showed me the plug was getting hot and the breaker was the wrong size, and none of us had noticed. After that we started tagging every cord with tape and pulling anything with a cut jacket right off the floor. Now the foreman checks cords at the start of shift and it takes ten minutes instead of costing us a day.

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