Also mentioned early in this 2017 video, 12 strands of a cable broke during an earthquake.

Lets just hope the Internet Archive (host of the wayback machine) manages to stay in business:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/publishers-sue-internet-archive-over-massive-digital-lending-program/

Ugh, legally the publishers have a strong case, morally and ethically they should abandon the law suit.
If this was say a national library doing the same thing, the publishers wouldn't even consider a lawsuit.

The Internet Archive is the only copy of some former websites, and other defunct digital content.
It should be protected in law, but it isn't.
If we didn't have a bunch of technophobes and cynical old men in government, the IA would have the protection it needs.

I've seen toaster ovens with short lengths of solid wire welded between adjacent elements.
But never that extensive, or over longer distances.

Also seen spade terminals welded to heating elements, at right angles so you can't just slide the element out.

Looks like a fibreglass pole to me, the only metal part would be the base.

I've seen lightning strike a power pole directly.
Scored a direct hit on a 66kV overhead line, then took off in the direction of the substation.
It's arrival being shown as a brief wispy smoke cloud hanging over the station.
I called the power company, they were worried, they sent a helicopter!
Power was restored soon after.

Went past later to see what they had fixed.
The lightning had jumped from the 66kV cable into the 11kV switch yard.
A small transformer had two brand new fuses, it powers all the control and switching systems.

So where did the smoke come from ?
Yeah they found out 2 weeks later all 3 brand new underground 11kV cables had been damaged, and needed the first 50M of each dug up and replaced.

has anybody tried designspark

https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/pcb-software

Been using DesignSpark for about a year now, as a replacement for Eagle after the buy out broke a lot of my libraries.
Use it with Library Loader, which is part component database website, part conversion software.

Free + no limitations for what I'm doing with it.

One neat trick I only just found, you can copy paste whole PCB designs between projects. So no need for panelization software.

Posted a link to this on EEVBlog forum, forgot to post it here too.

Found this video from Kevin Gittemeier
Yes the magic smoke did escape, from several places.
Rather interesting how cheaply made an elevator drive VFD can be.