![]() ![]() The public was exposed to a very high level of danger for a substantial time." He said the company's system had failed twice in rapid succession in little more than an hour and the failures were on the part of two separate call centre operators. ![]() "The fine in this case is in no way a measure of the value of the loss of Professor Levinsky's life. "The company accepts that had there been a proper response an engineer would have gone to the site and the power isolated well before he died. A sequence of events resulted in this desperate tragedy. "The tragedy of his death is that it should not have happened. He said: "The effect of Professor Levinsky's death on his family has been immeasurable and the effect on the city of Plymouth is also immense. Fining the company, Mr Justice Owen said the tragedy would undermine the public's faith in call centres like the one that failed to act. The pole that fell was almost 60 years old, was rotten to the core, and had not been checked since 1998, the court was told. After Levinsky died the company was able to cut off the power remotely within 14 minutes. They should have flagged up the calls immediately, which would have sent the report straight to a supervisor and caused an alarm bell to sound in a control room, Plymouth crown court was told. Though the company that owned the line, Western Power Distribution, had been warned more than two hours earlier about the dangerous cables, call centre staff logged the alerts as low priority. The scientist, who was 1.95 metres (6ft 5in) tall, was on a New Year's Day walk with his family when his left ear touched the power line as it drooped over a footpath near his home at Wembury, Plymouth. ![]()
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