We stopped in Amory, MS during a post-Christmas family trip. While there, I saw amazing electrical work. Amazing as in, “How do they get away with this?”
The city’s main square was festooned with electric Christmas lights. These lights are fed from the square’s northeast side:
Look more closely:
This bird’s nest of wires is a safety nightmare of Romex, wire nuts, and electrical tape. Wire nuts and electrical tape are only to be used within small enclosures, like junction boxes. Romex is only used in dry, indoor areas where humans aren’t (attics, between walls, subfloors, etc.).
This stuff is in the open!
It gets worse. See the white wire running down the pole? That’s Romex running to the ground! And running along the ground to trees and other displays!
For example:
And along the ground, you see dandies like exposed wire nuts:
Sometimes they’re nice enough to cover it up with electrical tape:
But sometimes they don’t use electrical tape and leave off a wire nut!
Here the Romex terminates at a plug in outlet on a metal fence near their Frisco steam engine:
Sometimes they just left these outlets on the ground. No electrical tape, either:
I was shocked that a city of this size would allow such amateurish, shoddy electrical work in a pedestrian area.