When ever I see a story like this I remember my high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Hull, telling us that gold is, in fact, a better conductor of electricity than copper. He went on to say that gold wasn’t used because it’s expensive and everyone, including himself, would be climbing the utility poles to cut down the wires to sell. Now copper is becoming too valuable and the Hull theory of power line thievery is being played out in real life.
Copper thieves looking to make a quick buck have done an estimated $12,000 damage in the past month to electrical equipment owned by City Water, Light and Power.I wonder if Mr. Hull is responsible for some of CWLP’s woes.
The thieves are stealing copper from grounding equipment on utility poles and from within substations, then selling it as scrap. The metal has been removed from more than 120 pieces of equipment during the last 30 days, causing some utility poles to catch fire and creating some power outages.
5 comments:
That is scary. Aside from posting guards at every pole, I wonder what CWLP can do to prevent this.
YEAH! Shout out to Ron Hull!!
You want scary? We had a house that was for sale across the street from us ... and it was empty at the time. Someone broke into the basement and stripped out the copper.
BUT ... they didn't know what they were doing ... didn't turn off the gas line ... and the house was an explosion ready to happen when the realtor stopped by that evening.
The police came by our house and asked if we saw anything ... but we hadn't. They said that if there had been a single spark ... if that relator had been smoking as she opened the door ... we would've had a crater across the street.
I have a friend who works for a fire restoration company and he said that it's a race between them and the copper thieves to see who can get to a house first once the fire department leaves.
Mr. Hull is a wise man. I'll always remember, after he would describe some mysterious scientific oddity, how he would look at us in mock dumbfoundedness and say "What gives?" before explaining the principle.
Dan
Back in the 80's, in Taylorville, some of the crazies running around town would steal peoples window unit air conditioners and try to harvest the copper out of the condensors for beer money...
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