Shocking wire theft plunges Eastport Drive into darkness

scotto

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Feb 15, 2004
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Posted with permission from the Hamilton Spectator


January 3, 2015
Hamilton Spectator
By Matthew Van Dongen


Death-defying copper thieves have plunged Eastport Drive into darkness by yanking out underground wiring connecting three kilometres of street lights.

It will take until February for the provincial Ministry of the Transportation to repair the approximately 100 street lights snuffed along the industrial artery between the Burlington lift bridge and Windermere Basin, a section that runs alongside the QEW.

Wire thieves also risked electrocution to plunder city street lights 10 times last year and most recently dug up about 18 metres of cable in the former Globe Park.

"Theft targeting ministry infrastructure is a growing problem in the City of Hamilton," said MTO spokesperson Astrid Poei, pointing to similar cable capers on the QEW and Highway 6. Both the OPP and Hamilton police are looking into the thefts, she said.

A contractor will replace the stolen wires and install "preventative measures" along Eastport as quickly as possible. But Poei warned it is a "time-consuming" repair, requiring each 10-metre-high pole to be taken down, refitted and reinstalled.

It will be a dark drive until February, but Poei said pedestrians have nothing to fear from the tangle of cut wires sticking out of the pole bottoms because the power has been cut.

That's a relief to resident Lynda Lukasik, who first noticed the wires peeking out of the light standards while cycling several days ago. "I thought, gee, that doesn't look safe," she recalled. "Then I was driving home a few nights later and realized practically the whole road was dark."

Poei said the first of ongoing thefts were discovered by the MTO in the summer.

Around the same time, piles of stripped wire casings started showing up in nearby Windermere Basin. This fall, The Spectator reported the stringy plastic strangled at least two water birds in Red Hill Creek.

Poei said the ministry won't reveal how the thieves reeled in kilometres of underground wire on a busy road or how it hopes to protect the repaired light standards in future.

But the city has already begun replacing stolen copper wire with aluminum, which is far less valuable to rogue scrappers, said street light project manager Peter Locs.

He said thefts tend to spike along with the price of copper, although the value of the metal has fallen to under $3 a pound. A couple of years ago — when copper was worth $3.60 a pound — thieves dug up monitoring wires for landfills and stripped baseball floodlights in Globe Park. The Red Hill pedestrian bridge has also been plundered repeatedly.

Street light repairs ranges from $500 to more than $10,000, said Locs. "It can be very costly if we have to do a lot of excavation or (the thieves) do a lot of damage," he said.

The problem is serious enough to prompt a sticker campaign emphasizing the use of aluminum wiring in hard-hit city infrastructure, said parks project manager Kara Bunn. "It's just basically telling (thieves) it isn't worth their while, hopefully," she said.

Coun. Sam Merulla recently asked city staff to report on possible 24-hour camera surveillance for city parks plagued by theft or illegal dumping.

"It's frustrating, because it seems like every measure we take to stop this sort of thing, there is a criminal busy figuring out another way around it," he said. "It's also amazing to me, given how moronically dangerous it is to rip out wires from live infrastructure."

In 2010, a man was electrocuted trying to steal wiring from a Wainfleet transformer. A would-be thief was also badly burned in 2007 while cutting a live wire with a hacksaw at a closed factory on Lottridge Street.



mvandongen@thespec.com

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http://www.thespec.com/news-story/5240685-shocking-wire-theft-plunges-eastport-drive-into-darkness/
 

Sharla1

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Oct 15, 2009
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#2
I read this article earlier. One of these times one is going to be sorry with shocks. All it takes is one wrong move.
 

scotto

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Feb 15, 2004
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I was talking with a Beach Resident today and he informed me that someone had dumped a large amount of wire casings on the path between the ponds across from Hutch's, I will see if I can stop by and have a look.
 
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