Construction site deaths - scaffold collapse, fall from height, electric shock

Avoidable accidents at different construction sites led to death of 3 persons in construction sites.
The primary reasons are collapse of scaffold on which persons were working, fall of person from height and burns due to electric shock respectively.
The news item may be read in the link below.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/three-construction-workers-killed-within-5-hours/

What is the safe voltage to work?

Many assume 24 V power supply is safe to handle. But an article in the link below shows that shock is possible even at 12 V, some sensation can be felt and secondary effects of such shock can endanger the person.
Even for DC supply, with a body resistance of 500 ohms in wet condition and 41 mA DC current leading to painful shock to women means 500 x 0.041=20.5 V.
People are reluctant to have earthing for the machinery saying that the voltage is less but we do not know what can happen and are ready to trade safety for a worst experience (shock!!!).
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_3/4.html

Power failure due to snake in a feeder box

A snake entered a feeder box from which power is supplied to an industrial area. The snake died of electric shock and at the same time, power supply to the industrial area also got cut off. Concerned officers of electricity board could not find the reason for power failure for more than 10 hours. After search, they found 1.5 m long dead snake in the feeder box. They claim that they did not see such a problem earlier. Production loss for 10 hours, environment pollution due to DG (diesel generator) sets operated during the period, revenue loss for the power supplier and the inconvenience caused to public will add to large amount, though the cost of preventing such incident i.e ensuring no openings, is minuscule. Many times, we see open fuse boxes, partly opened doors of power distribution boards, etc which can lead to entry of reptiles and causing such damages and this has become an accepted norm for such industries.

The following link give some extra information about similar incidents.
http://www.fort.usgs.gov/resources/education/bts/impacts/electrical.asp

Faulty transformer - shock to the village

Two persons died, 10 persons got injured and several electrical appliances got damaged when an entire village was under electric shock. The two persons died when they tried to switch on power supply in their homes. The news item appeared in Times of India. The report says this happened due to a faulty transformer and after the identifying the problem, the transformer was replaced and power supply was restored.

I talked to my friends of electrical engineering discipline on this news item. I was told that this can happen, due to lack of earthing, or supply of high voltage directly to domestic users, or when there is contact of phase with the body of the equipment with no neutral. If persons are wet, then they can get shock while switching the plug.

Earlier also there were many news reports of damage of TVs, refrigerators, bursting of picture tubes, etc due to high voltage.