Maria Barbu, Teen Who Dies While Tweeting In Bathtub, 17
DGH
Teen Dies While Tweeting In Bathtub
By ANDREW RAMOS
BRASOV, ROMANIA (WPIX)
For some, the social networking site Twitter could be addictive, while for
others it could be downright deadly.
A teenage girl was electrocuted after police say she accidentally dropped
her laptop into a drawn bath she was sitting in.
Police believe Maria Barbu, 17, was attempting to plug in her laptop with
wet hands after the battery died during an intense session on Twitter. The
teen clearly used bad judgement when she decided to "tweet" on her laptop
and bathe at the same time, police said.
Further details on the death are unknown.
Barbu's body was reportedly found by her parents with the smoking laptop
lying right next to her.
WPIX-TV
AJM
> her laptop into a drawn bath she was sitting in.
>
Del
"AJM" <ajmi...@cavtel.net> wrote in message
news:54bab166-7440-4d71...@z34g2000vbl.googlegroups.com...
I knew the dangers as a kid only because I saw so many movies where
this was the method of murder. I noticed that the death took place in
Romania, I wonder how many people in North America would die from such
accidents if bathroom circuits allowed one to just plug in any device?
I've seen 3 and 4 year olds try to mimic their parents by attempting
to put a plug into a wall face plate. It's a good thing bathrooms are
wired differently. I'm not mechanically inclined but I believe we
(North Americans) use what's called a ground fault outlet in the
bathroom, and in outside plates. Whatever it is called I'm glad it's
there.
It wouldn't surprise me that many young folks today are unaware of the
dangers of juice and water. A lot of people complain about building
codes, but some of those codes can save lives. I've read in this
newsgroup where kids as old as 16 would hang out on public utility
line wires. One kid died, the parents sued, and in this case----won.
Supposedly there was not enough info on the dangers of the juice in
power lines.
Del
Brad Ferguson
<deln...@att.net> wrote:
> I knew the dangers as a kid only because I saw so many movies where
> this was the method of murder. I noticed that the death took place in
> Romania, I wonder how many people in North America would die from such
> accidents if bathroom circuits allowed one to just plug in any device?
> I've seen 3 and 4 year olds try to mimic their parents by attempting
> to put a plug into a wall face plate. It's a good thing bathrooms are
> wired differently. I'm not mechanically inclined but I believe we
> (North Americans) use what's called a ground fault outlet in the
> bathroom, and in outside plates. Whatever it is called I'm glad it's
> there.
It's a GFI (often called a GFCI) outlet. It detects when you do
something like throw a connected water heater into a bathtub in order
to kill a Soviet spy. (The outlet measures the current between the hot
and neutral wires. If there's a sudden difference of more than five
milliamps, it tells the outlet's interrupter that the current is going
somewhere else -- for instance, into that bathtub with the spy in it --
and the interrupter breaks the circuit.)
You can also protect the entire circuit with a GFCI breaker. If the
bathroom in Romania had had either the outlet or the circuit, the girl
would likely still be alive.
Charlene
> On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:15:36 -0400, Brad Ferguson
>
> <thirt...@frXOXed.net> wrote:
> >It's a GFI (often called a GFCI) outlet. It detects when you do
> >something like throw a connected water heater into a bathtub in order
> >to kill a Soviet spy. (The outlet measures the current between the hot
> >and neutral wires. If there's a sudden difference of more than five
> >milliamps, it tells the outlet's interrupter that the current is going
> >somewhere else -- for instance, into that bathtub with the spy in it --
> >and the interrupter breaks the circuit.)
>
> unless you install them yourself. My house was built in 1979 and
> doesn't have them, though I'd like to think I'm smart enough for it
> not to matter.
When I moved into my house there were no GFCIs, despite the fact that
code has called for them for decades. I had two installed (you should
have one in your kitchen, and it's necessary if you have an outlet
less than five feet from the sink).
David Carson
wrote:
>You can also protect the entire circuit with a GFCI breaker. If the
>bathroom in Romania had had either the outlet or the circuit, the girl
>would likely still be alive.
In her case, probably only for a short time.
BTW, since only a few brands of notebook computers ever had internal AC
transformers, and I haven't seen any of them in years, the way I'm
picturing this is that she was actually electrocuted when she dropped the
"brick" transformer into the tub, not by the computer itself. I don't
think its possible to be killed by some 100 Watts of low-voltage DC.
David Carson
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