Workers Knew Their Job Was Dangerous : Tragedy: Three dead men are remembered as courteous and hard working. They also knew they were in an inherently hazardous business.

Just hours before an underground electrical explosion claimed the lives of Brian Miles and his two co-workers, the Pasadena Water and Power Department employee pointed his flashlight into a manhole in southwest Pasadena and allowed a curious family to peer inside.

The Scheffeys, who live in the tony neighborhood near La Loma Road and South San Rafael Avenue, had wandered out of their darkened home Thursday evening to see when the workers might be able to get their power back on.

As the light flickered across the burned wires inside the vault, Miles apologized for the outage that left the Scheffeys without power on such a hot night.

Miles “was extremely cooperative, concerned and courteous rather than . . . saying ‘Lady, we don’t know when you’re going to have power,’ ” said Gwen Scheffey.

He also seemed dead-set against entering the manhole. “The thing that was so awful was that they were so clear that it was an extremely hazardous situation and they didn’t dare go down into the hole,” Scheffey said.

At 10:25 p.m., neighbors heard a series of explosions that sounded like “a rocket was going off.”

The three workers inside were killed, apparently instantly, when a 4,000-volt line blew. Firefighters who pulled out the charred corpses said the clothes had burned off their bodies.

Miles, 36, of Pasadena, and Larry Hokenson, 38, of West Covina, were relative newcomers to the department, thrilled by recent promotions to cable splicers, their families said. Walter (Glenn) Wise, 50, of Temple City, was a supervisor with 29 years under his belt.

A fourth worker, Joe Armstrong of Sierra Madre, escaped death. He had just left the cavern on an errand to get coffee for the three workers. His family declined to comment, other than to agree that Armstrong had been extremely lucky.

On Friday, as the city’s power company officials searched for an explanation for the tragedy, the families of those who died at their jobs groped for words to express their sorrow.

“He just made journeyman,” said Sheldon Miles, the younger brother of Brian Miles. “(He) worked his way up from a helper at $8 an hour to $23 an hour in four years.”

Miles left behind an ex-wife and 10-year-old son, his brother said.

Hokenson’s death left five children fatherless. Family members described him as “a real hard worker who loved his boys.” He planned to move with two of his sons into a new home in Fontana later this month to be closer to his family, said his distraught mother, Jean Hokenson of Victorville. The other children live with their mothers, Hokenson’s two ex-wives.

One son, Aaron, 16, said he grew numb when he heard of his father’s death. “I just walked into the back yard and sat there for a while,” the teen-ager said Friday.

Wise’s family could not be reached Friday, but a friend who answered their phone said Wise is survived by a wife and two grown children.

Another friend, Jerry Douglas of Kelbey Construction Co., said Wise had survived an underground explosion several years ago. “He got burned pretty bad,” Douglas said.

Thursday’s accident was the worst such disaster to hit Pasadena in recent memory.

In 1962, two city Water and Power Department employees were killed when a switch failed in a vault, creating a ball of fire, said David Plumb, the utility’s general manager. In 1968, two employees received serious face and hand burns in a manhole blast.

“The electrical high voltage business is inherently dangerous,” said Jerry Lohr, an engineer with the city’s power company. “It’s one of those things you become used to. You learn to respect it.”

At work on Friday, Water and Power Department employees took the news hard, according to superintendent Joe Schworm.

“Your working companion is the next closest thing to one of your loved ones,” Schworm said. “They’re just about like blood brothers because you put your life in your partner’s hands.”

Times staff writers Ben Sullivan, Siok-Hian Tay Kelley, Berkley Hudson and Vicki Torres contributed to this story.