Thumbs down: Here's something not to do this summer

This should come as a shock to no one, but climbing a PG&E transmission tower is a really bad idea.

This would explain why warning signs are posted prominently and short metal spikes have been installed to make scaling these structures all the more difficult. Nonetheless, for some reason, people do it, as witnessed on Tuesday afternoon when an as-yet unidentified man suffered extensive high-voltage shocks and fell about 80 feet from a tower along the Prince Memorial Greenway path near Sixth Street in Santa Rosa.

As electrician Bryan Hanson noted, the man “was screaming. His clothes and his hair were on fire.” He said he watched as the man received two to three massive jolts from the 115-kilovolt power line before cartwheeling to the ground. Once there, the flames started a small grass fire. Fire officials say the victim, who was flown by medical helicopter to UC Davis Medical Center, suffered burns to roughly 75 percent of his body and suffered massive trauma from the fall as well as other injuries from the electrical shock itself.

Here's hoping he recovers – and that others learn from it.