Agree with bad crimp/ high resistance heating. The copper at the crimp appears melted! The breaker will not trip in those cases. Consider yourself lucky that nearby materials did not ignite. The little wire would typically be the feed to an indicator light or a voltmeter.
So the question is who worked on that terminal last and what else did they do? As a minimum the white and green wires of that cable plus the connections on the other end are questionable.
Those little infrared cameras that plug into a smart phone could have easily spotted this problem long time before failure.
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Archie
Irish Lady
1984 Monk 36 Hull #46
Currently in Cape May, NJ
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