Red Triangle, possible inverter pump?

I doubt there's much code upgrades for the power grid as technology advances as many wildfires that start out west often are caused by powerline equipment that's near a hundred years old.

But in houses the newest breakers they're requiring are arc sensing... We just had knob and tube replaced in my new rental and those arc sensing breakers are super expensive and my really old miter saw, likely other power tools as well, trips those breakers without much effort.

If our country actually spent money on domestic infrastructure rather than bombing nearly 40 countries to smithereens since WWII we'd probably have arc sensing breakers on power poles so you don't have the terrifying scenario you explained.

 

You gave this scenario:

The point is, if you cut into that service drop with your pole saw, it's nice that you won't feel a shock through the fiberglass handle, but mighty impressive other things will happen.

You may not be grounded, but the bare wire in the service drop definitely is. Even better than being grounded, it runs right back to the center tap of the transformer.

The blast radius beyond which a dead short can be fun isn't always ten feet; it totally depends on the available power to the short (current as well as voltage).

This is where it matters that the service drop is upstream of your breakers. If you look at your main breakers, they might be built to trip at 100 amps (maybe 200 if your house is newer). But there's a number in smaller print also, the "interrupting rating", and you might see that listed as 10 or 20 thousand amps. That's because the breakers have to be able to stop the full current that utility transformer is otherwise able to dump into a short.

I've got video here of what was absolutely a 240/120 secondary, not a primary, whipping all over my parents' backyard and spraying metal wherever it went. A ten foot distance would not have made that fun for me.

I also remember a different occasion (didn't get video though), when I lived in a four-storey apartment building where the utility poles ran by in the alley at about second-storey height, and a roofing crew parked a truck in the alley and started throwing roof parts down into it until they knocked the 11kV primary down onto the truck. My second-storey apartment had the window facing right where the lines ran, and fortunately I had just turned away from the window moments before.

An odd thing I remember—I don't know the explanation—is that the light flash from the 11kV line is much bluer than from an angry 240/120V drop. The 240/120 just makes harsh white flashes, but the higher voltage makes a very pretty blue. (I am glad I just saw it on the far wall of my apartment, and wasn't looking right at it.)