Copper Thieves

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Thieves take to live power lines with bolt cutters for copper

Thieves who tried to steal live electrical wires with bolt cutters are lucky to be alive, Ausgrid says.The incident off Awaba Road in Toronto, south of Newcastle, caused two outages for 770 customers in parts of Carey Bay, Kilaben Bay and Toronto from about 3am to 7.30am on Wednesday.

First big time super dangerous theft in my region. I'm surprised to see it happen.

Any copper theft happening in your area?
 

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Lead from church roofs too. Many now have a sign "There is no lead on our roof; it has all been stolen".

It is now routine in many parts of Britain that if you have something metal replaced (e.g. new gas fire, new washing machine) then instead of taking the old one to the tip or paying someone else to take it you just leave it in your front garden. Within about a week it will disappear into one of the travelling white vans which roam around.
 
After this bridge collapsed, the place I worked ran a temporary fiber optic cable (aerial and on the surface of the ground) down to a 'command station' on the river.
I-35W Mississippi River bridge - Wikipedia

Sometime after the command station shut down, some people apparently cut out accessible portions thinking they would get something that was worth salvage. Outdoor fiber cable has a plastic sheath, a corrugated aluminum armor, and inside that are plastic tubes with bundles of glass, filled with a nasty water-blocking gel. They left it laying on the ground after inspecting it ;)
 
Lead from church roofs too. Many now have a sign "There is no lead on our roof; it has all been stolen".

It is now routine in many parts of Britain that if you have something metal replaced (e.g. new gas fire, new washing machine) then instead of taking the old one to the tip or paying someone else to take it you just leave it in your front garden. Within about a week it will disappear into one of the travelling white vans which roam around.
When my mother passed away 2 years ago I returned to S. London for the funeral and to help clear out the house.
Besides the back and forth to the charity shop, we needed to empty my father's shed which had not been touched since his passing and my brother suggested we put anything metal at the bottom of the drive because Romanian Gypsies go around the streets picking up.
While at the bottom of the drive I heard the clip-clop of horse's hoofs and saw a Rag and Bone man just about to pass by the cul de sac. I shouted to him and he reversed his cart and was really pleased to load up everything while his horse chewed a big hole in the neighbours hedge.
I never imagined that there were still rag and bone men with horses on the congested streets of London, we took lots of images, it was a real pickup during a sad time. The guy was in his 80's and his father before him was also a rag and bone man. It was kind of nice, old school Londoners, and all that.
 
I was at the office one aftrnoon and flipped on the a/c, and about a half hour later wondered why it was still hot and humid. I went outside and found this ......

My commercial policy has a $10K deductible, so this was about a $5K hit to me, for thieves to get maybe $20 - $30 bucks in metals. I spent another $900 bucks on a near military installation grade fence around the replacements ..... That can still be defeated of course, but my experience is that most thieves are lazy and opportunistic, and like most criminals, go for soft, easy, targets.

It was a big problem around here from about 2010 on, but I don't hear much about it now. This theft was in 2012.

Win W5JAG
 

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The whole lazy, opportunistic comment reminded me of living in Montreal. Unbelievable how fast anything will disappear if it's not bolted down there. We were having a retaining wall repaired, and the decorative metal fence had to be removed temporarily. It was gone overnight, for what, $15 in metal scrap value?
 
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