IID Says Power Outage Caused By Copper Theft
by Mark Cowan
Almost 900 IID customers were without power thanks to Copper theft causing employees and rate payers problems.
“If employees are going to a system that is unstable because the copper wiring has been removed, they don’t know what they’re getting into so the system can react in ways they don’t expect,” says Marion Champion, IID’s Officer of Media Communication.
“There have been instances where people have gotten seriously hurt, even killed, during commission of copper theft,” says Indio Police Department Commander Henk Peters. Commander Peters says Indio PD’s street crime unit works actively on metal theft cases with local recycle centres.
One recycle centre says copper can be recycled for $0.90 to $1.65/lb.When thieves come in, and they steal the copper grounds or they steal copper from some of our equipment, they may get $5 or $10 worth of copper at the recycling place…it will end up costing the district and its rate payers thousands of dollars to replace,” says Champion.
Source: kesq.com
