Electric shock accident at bank HQ set me on fire, breathing black smoke
AN ELECTRICIAN has told how surviving a horrific accident while working on the new Goldman Sachs HQ was “like getting a second chance at life”.
Part-time model George White, 27, was engulfed in flames and suffered 45 per cent burns when he received a massive electric shock at the £350 million development in Holborn Viaduct.
He was in a medically induced coma for weeks and remains in hospital nearly six months after the accident.
But speaking from his bed at Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, he said: “I feel like I was given a second chance at life and I have to grab it.
“The pain was so bad after the electric shock I thought I’d die. I’m so grateful to the doctors who helped me.”
Mr White was injured while removing a section of cable from a panel last July.
All risk assessments had been carried out and the electrical charge had been turned off. But when he reached for the cable with a spanner he received “a massive shock”.
He said: “I remember seeing a flash and electricity coming out of my leg. It set me on fire. I sat on the floor breathing out black smoke, as my insides had been burnt. My arms were grey and my hands were burned to a crisp.”
Paramedics struggled to reach him but Mr White defied his agony to walk out to an ambulance. He said: “I don’t know how I got through the pain.”
The injuries have forced Mr White, of east London, to give up his employment as an electrician, as well as his work as a part-time model and his amateur boxing career. He said: “I was doing really well — in good shape and also finding my feet as a model.
“Now I don’t know what I will do for work or what I can cope with… I can deal with the medical side of things but the mental side is hard.”
Before the injury he had been working for London-based Ugly Models, which specialises in unconventional “character-models”.
Agency founder Marc French said: “George was very talented, for sure. The kind of stuff we do is characterbased and he looked like a pretty-boy boxer and was working regularly.”
Mr White’s lawyer Jenny Kennedy, of Anthony Gold Solicitors, said Chubb Insurance were yet to pay out following the accident. She added: “George was a young, skilled electrician and this accident has robbed him of a career and his love of sport.”
Chubb International said the firm did not comment on individual claims.
There is no suggestion that Goldman Sachs or Mr White’s employer Wingate Electrical PLC were in any way at fault for the accident.